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Falling through the Earth

By Danielle Trussoni. Henry Holt and Co., New York, 2006. 240 pages.

Rhode Island writer Danielle Trussoni’s memoir is neither eloquent nor remarkable for its story. It is one more book about the damage wrought by alcoholism, written by someone made sad and imperfect by the ordeal, someone who turns to writing to explore and, perhaps, benefit in some way.

the alcoholic is Dan Trussoni, the author’s father. What makes the difference for readers is Dan’s stint in Vietnam as a tunnel rat. Tunnel rats were heralded for their bravery and worried over for their reckless bravado. Those who survived the perilous work often suffered when they got home, from post-traumatic stress disorder in all of its cruel manifestations. Hieronymus Bosch, mystery writer Michael Connelly’s embattled LA police detective, was a tunnel rat who never got over it, and, like Trussoni, he refused to deal with it once leaving Vietnam.

The North Vietnamese dug an extensive network of tunnels for communication, storage, and travel. Once the Americans discovered these tunnels — pitch black, exceedingly narrow, fetid crawlspaces — they combed them for supplies, arms, and for the enemy. They flushed and destroyed the tunnels if they weren’t killed first. The VC rigged the tunnels with booby traps intended to maim and kill in horrific ways. Dan Trussoni, in one of the key scenes in the book, is witness to a tunnel incident that we assume is partly to blame for his phenomenal consumption of alcohol and his criminal disregard for his children. Attributing blame to Vietnam, though, may be the author’s fantasy, since her father had a pre-war record of truancy and misbehavior. 

There are three or four key moments in “Falling through the Earth” that the author builds around. None of the moments live up to their promise and there is a lot of padding in between. To keep the story interesting, Danielle jumps around in time, from the father’s debauchery post-war, back to Vietnam, and forward to the throat cancer that whittles him down to frail. We read through too many scenes of dad drinking, of Danielle and siblings as street urchins, of Danielle as a regular at Roscoe’s — her dad’s favorite bar, of her detached mother growing more detached by the day; in effect, all the requisite components of a childhood in an unspectacular drunken and dysfunctional home.

In large part, we read for the trip that Danielle takes in her early twenties to Vietnam. We, like Danielle, want meaning or at least insight. She tried to get her father to accompany her but he wasn’t interested. So, against the advice of travel agents, she went alone. In Vietnam she is followed by a man in sunglasses, something she dramatizes a good deal but cannot not pay off since she knows, while writing this book months or years later, that the man is a petty thief, at best. After a steady build up, the man just disappears. This red herring is one of two in Vietnam. The other is her brief trip into a tunnel, which is led by a Vietnamese tour guide touting anti-American propaganda. Danielle again dramatizes the few minutes spent in that Disney-like tourist destination, though she is within earshot of the guide who pulls her out quickly when she’s had enough.

The most harrowing account in the book comes out of nowhere. Trussoni’s seven-year-old brother runs in front of a car and is hit. From her description, we assume the boy is hopelessly broken. But he does survive. That’s what this story is really about — coping and surviving irresponsible parents.

Danielle includes scenes where, as a teenager, she drinks heavily, takes drugs, and shoplifts. We never find out, though, how she became a mother and wife living in Rhode Island, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and someone with the ability to write, finish, and publish a book.

She may have written this book too soon. It relies on pumped-up incidents and the telling of drunken barroom antics. Absent are confrontations propelled by rage and disappointment. Missing are the resulting insights. Missing is understanding and change. Then again, that’s the problem with PTSD. It’s not really curable, it’s too ugly to want to explore, and like those grenades tossed into and out of the tunnels, its damage is widespread and, perhaps, irreversible.