One of the New York Times Book Review‘s 10 Best Books of the Year
New York Times bestselling author Danielle Trussoni’s unforgettable memoir of her wild and haunted father, a man whose war never really ended.
“Danielle Trussoni unflinchingly explores a daughter’s love for her flawed father and confronts the demons that haunt them both. Falling Through the Earth is tender and tough, harrowing and triumphant.”
—Jeanette Walls, author of The Glass Castle
From her charismatic father, Danielle Trussoni learned how to rock and roll, outrun the police, and never shy away from a fight. Spending hour upon hour trailing him around the bars and honky-tonks of La Crosse, Wisconsin, young Danielle grew up fascinated by stories of her dad’s adventures as a tunnel rat in Vietnam, where he’d risked his life crawling head first into narrow passageways to search for American POWs.
A vivid and poignant portrait of a daughter’s relationship with her father, this funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully written memoir, Falling Through the Earth, “makes plain that the horror of war doesn’t end in the trenches” (Vanity Fair).
“A finely tuned account of the relationship between Trussoni and her father, a man who betrays the people he loves, visiting on them torments he can’t, despite his best effort, contain… The affection, respect and humor she brings to the task of revealing this complicated individual is testimony both to her creative abilities and to the generosity of her spirit.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Trussoni has taken an extended trip to hell and come back with treasures from that drunken, burning, broken place. She writes of the effects of war, the “pity of war, and the pity that war distills” without a hint of self-pity, with surprising humor, disarming candor, a hard-won wisdom and with uncannily sure-footed prose. Even if this book were not urgently important and devastatingly timely, I’d still urge you to read it for the sheer triumph of the author’s gift.”
—Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight