Falling through the Earth

A father-daughter relationship is murky at best most of the time. A father-daughter relationship involving a Vietnam war survivor who spent most of his time in 'Nam hunting the enemy in underground tunnels is downright challenging. But Danielle Trussoni somehow makes her relationship work with her hard-drinking, hard-working, un-affectionate father who raised her while her siblings grew up with her mother.

Trussoni captures the life she led with her father in her memoir Falling through the Earth. In it she recounts sitting as a child on a bar stool in Roscoe's as her father and her uncles traded stories. She also reveals her own experience of going to Vietnam and traveling down into the tunnels that kept the Viet Cong alive during the long years of the war. It was there that she believed she would find a piece of her father that he had left behind as a young man.

Trussoni comes back without the missing key to her father's affections, but in the meantime she learns more of who she is and the stock she came from than most ever begin to realize.

Falling through the Earth is an interesting read. Don't expect any great revelations from this memoir, instead, just go along for the ride.