Book Review: Falling Through the Earth by Danielle Trussoni - Page 2

The tumult stems in part from the fact her father "always went back to the war alone." Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he did not want to talk about his experiences or emotions. Instead, it came out in his actions and personality. As a result, Vietnam became "an amorphous monster" that permeated Trussoni life in La Crosse, Wisc.

It came to live in our house, eat dinner at our table, sleep in our beds. It trailed me home from school; it lapped at my heels as I walked to Roscoe's. It was an elusive yet inescapable thing skulking through my life, a Jack-the-Ripper presence that hid in alleyways and in the sewers, waiting to get me alone. We could ignore it, but it would not go away. If we managed to shake it, it would track us down, hungry for more. Although there was no way for me, as a child, to understand this presence, I knew, when I saw my father's sadness, that he had never really left Vietnam.

As things eventually worsen between father and daughter over the years, Danielle decides to go to Vietnam to try to understand why her father never left there. She tours and even enters tunnels like those he explored and in which his friends died. She describes various encounters there with an ominous man in sunglasses who seems to keep following her. Is he a figment of her imagination or a physical embodiment of the Jack-the-Ripper presence the war became in her life?

If Falling Through the Earth has a problem, it may be more in timing than style or content. Coming on the heels of the uproar over James Frey's memoirs and litigation over Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors, a reader may wonder how much literary license is taken in recounting the story. While Trussoni notes that she has attempted to reproduce her father's Vietnam stories "as accurately as possible," considerable parts of the book and incidents in it stem from her pre-teen years.

Yet memory — the foundation of any memoir — is like life. It is not and can not be an exact science. The combination of the emotional struggle between a father and daughter too much alike and the continuing repercussions of a father's war makes this a compelling and passionate work about war and memory and their impact on life.

Article Author: Tim Gebhart

Tim Gebhart lives in Sioux Falls, SD, where he practices law in order to provide shelter for his family, his dogs, and his books. He is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and his blog de guerre is A Progressive on the Prairie.

Visit Tim Gebhart's author page — Tim Gebhart's Blog