Falling Through the Earth

by Danielle Trussoni

This book was given to me by my neighbors Trapper and Stacie. They knew I would like it very much. Trapper is a Vietnam Vet, and I am always asking him questions, and listening to him talk about the war. It is an area of great interest for me.

I am not sure why, perhaps because much of it was going on when I was too young to really understand the depth of it all, and so learning as much as I can about things now are significant for me. I also always have memories of my Uncle Arlan and Pat who were married just before he was deployed to Vietnam. I never really understood it all, and so this book was another significant one for me.

Even though I don't know for sure if Danielle is a typical daughter of a Vet, I don't know if the way she grew up was that typical of a loving caring family. She seemed to go through a lot of other issues that may or may not be related to her father's own issues.

Danielle writing is great, and I found it hard to put the book down, at times it did seem like things jumped around a bit, but she pulled it all together in the end for an emotional read. It did have a lot of the "raw" truth to her life, and those are always the things that strike a chord with me. Nothing was sugar coated to make her life seem like it was a breeze.

I guess one of the best parts of this book is that it made me ask questions, and look deeper in to the vets that I know. What their experiences were like, how it changed them, and how they deal with it. My neighbor Trapper is the first to openly discuss much of this with me, and I thank him so very much for that. He always says, that talking about it so much is his "therapy". I believe it.

The only other book on Vietnam Vet Experience that I have read that compares for me is Tim O'Brien's "What they carried with them".