Danielle Trussoni was born in La Crosse, WI. After attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she went on to do a MFA in fiction writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow and Callen Scholar. She has written for The New York Times, Glamour, and The New York Times Book Review, among other publications. Her first book, Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir, published by Henry Holt in March, 2006, was recipient of the 2006 Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award and was chosen to be part of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program.

Felicia C. Sullivan: Children often inherit their parent's unfinished business, and this can continue - this haunting, this traumatic event, this rootless life - for generations until a child forges some sort of closure, makes peace with an old hurt, perhaps a war. The Vietnam War, in a sense, could be said to be your legacy. Growing up with a father who assumed one of the most dangerous jobs in the war as a tunnel rat, crawling through the Vietcong's intricate labyrinths, searching for prisoners, ammunition - all the while risking his life with each tunnel he entered. A father who witnesses the violent deaths of his fellow men and knows first-hand about murder and ultimately returns home from the war a changed man who has the responsibility of raising a family. Yet, Dan Trussoni finds that he can't so easily forget those years and the war manifests itself in his drinking and his distance and often-neglectful behavior directed at his wife and family. At one point he remarks that he's passed on the war to you. From your honest, and sometimes tenuous relationship with your father through the years, and through your travels to Vietnam, have you reconciled the war, have come to a more profound understanding of your father and what he's endured and the real affects of Vietnam on your family?

Danielle Trussoni: I think that both writing Falling Through the Earthand all of the research that entailed (going to Vietnam, reading about the history of the war) has allowed me to have a better understanding about how Vietnam affected my life. Of course, there are many things that contribute to understanding the past, and especially such a complex and intense relationship as the one between a father and a daughter. By writing this book and looking at the war as clearly as possible I was able to imagine what my father had been through and this, in turn, put my own experiences into perspective. I don't think I will ever be totally reconciled to what happened in Vietnam. Not the draft, nor the amount of pain that the war caused people from all over the world.

FS: Home is defined as a "dwelling place," a place of "origin." In your memoir, you talk of many homes - Roscoe's, the neighborhood bar where you gambled for free brandies and everyone called your by your first name. Home was Trussoni Court - an idyllic home in the woods. Home was a small apartment shared with your father on the North Side. All the while though, it seems as if you were plotting your escape out of Wisconsin. What are your fondest memories in each dwelling place? And, as an adult, what does home mean to you?

DT: In retrospect, I was always plotting to leave the place I grew up in. When I was there, this manifested itself as a kind of abstract longing that I couldn't totally understand and contributed to my attraction to writing, perhaps as a way to define myself against my surroundings. By far my happiest memories I have of childhood are of living at Trussoni Court before my parents divorced. But I still feel a bit nostalgic for the bar my dad always hung out in (and the characters I met there). Now that my father is dead (he died the same month the book was published), those places are shot through with sadness. I'm trying very hard to create a sense of place and home. My family (I'm married and have two small children, a boy and a girl) has become very important to me.

FS: You paint an honest and elegant portrait of a contemporary Vietnam, a beautiful but polluted country that stretches beyond the five-star hotels and beach-bum bodies, a place where the affects of the War are still raw, where people negotiate their suspicious and unforgiving feelings towards the Americans whose tourist dollars brings them sustenance. A secret desire to perhaps chop off the hand that feeds you. And your memoir is timely since we once again find ourselves in an unpopular war with mounting casualties. Although your memoir is a personal story about the affects of the Vietnam War on your particular family (because of your father's harrowing experiences as a tunnel rat), can you speak on how this memoir not only relates to readers on an emotional level, but also on a social or political one?

DT: I began thinking about this book over ten years ago, and didn't have a specific political agenda, but I do hope that this book speaks to people about something larger than just one life. It seems to me that our culture is very disconnected from the rest of the world, and that we don't know much about what is happening out there. I wish that our cultural agenda (from the books and magazines that we read to what we watch on TV) was more international, that we found it more worth while to teach foreign languages to our children and to understand what is happening socially and politically in the world. And you're right: we're now stuck in another war that seems totally senseless. Why did we go to Vietnam? Why are we in Iraq? The answer (for me) to both of these questions is that we went to war out of fear. I think we need, as a country, to examine our motives for these wars. How similar are they? When one begins to compare these wars (from the Gulf of Tonkin incident to the faux WMDs), it becomes quite clear that there are many parallels, which is very upsetting to me. I only hope that Iraq does not turn out to be as terrible as Vietnam did. And I hope that we have services (mental health and otherwise) ready for returning soldiers.

FS: In one telling scene your father is deer hunting and you're concerned about the doe's baby's survival to which Dan quickly responds, contemptuously, "If it's strong, it will learn to feed itself." Throughout the book, you make your father's resentment of weakness abundantly clear, yet his reverence for survival is remarkably admirable - Dan Trussoni is a man who refuses to succumb to throat cancer, PTSD, endures a failed marriage and a fragile relationship with his children and attempts to right this towards the end of the book – an attitude of survival by any means possible. How does this seemingly strict Darwinian philosophy, this strength, manifest itself in the Trussoni daughters, who are now parents?

DT: My father was a survivor. Although he did eventually die of cancer earlier this year, he fought right up to the end. At one point we were discussing the past, and he said, "I lived my life the way I wanted to live. I wouldn't do anything differently." This perfectly captures his character. He made mistakes, but they were his mistakes, and that's the way it is. I think that his strength has taught me a great deal, although I don't raise my children according to the Dan Trussoni philosophy of child rearing. I'm much more like my mother, I think. There is something important about learning to be strong, but strength without tenderness is monstrous.

FS: On your trip to Vietnam - in a quest to perhaps see Vietnam through your father's eyes - a mysterious American man follows you. We later learn that "has no father and no identity card." Did you feel this stranger connected to you somehow? A shadow? A male Danielle living in Vietnam?

DT: At the time, I was simply scared of this guy. I went to Vietnam alone (mistake #1) and was on a mission to understand my father's experiences there, so when this man started following me, I was really unprepared to deal with him. When I was writing about this man, he became more of a shadow of the war lurking around every corner, but that was an interpretation that I had after I left Vietnam. I have no idea of who this man was (other than the little bit of information that I learned about him), but yes, of course he is connected to me in some way. The war in Vietnam changed his life; it changed my life. That is a strong connection.

FS: At one point your father gives you a videotape of old family home movies and you are grateful for this, for good memories - a gentle reminder that although your childhood was about survival, enduring a divorce and a distant father who you can't ever let go. Perhaps you can share one of your fondest childhood moments - a small moment that tells us about the complicated man you love.

DT: Before my father died, he sent me an email that asked if I remembered the times he used to take us skiing, and how much fun it was to make a thermos of hot chocolate and go out for the day into the snow. He taught me to ski when I was five years old. I was a fast learner, and was able to get down the hill the first afternoon. He had absolutely no patience, and this made him really happy. That afternoon is something that I'll always remember.

FS: Might you describe the journey after your book found its way into the world? Any surprises? disappointments? revelations?

DT: Falling Through the Earth has been out in the world for about three months now, and I haven't been disappointed at all. I was surprised (and delighted) that it was featured on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, and that it got as much press as it did. I think that I've also been a little surprised by the fact that people don't seem to understand how very anti-war this book is, and that I meant for it to be seen as a an examination of how war affects our society on every level. There haven't been many books about a child dealing with the repercussions of war, and I wish that the book would have been reviewed with this in mind.

FS: What are your bookshelf mainstays? Nabokov, Colette, food writing, fashion magazines, Flannery O'Conner, travel narratives. My husband, Nikolai Grozni, is a writer who was born in Eastern Europe, and so I have been reading all of his favorites lately (Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita is on of my favorites)

FS: If you could host a salon in your home of artists and writers, living or dead, who would you have in your home for cocktails and why?

DT: I would love to meet Colette. I love her lack of inhibition and her sensuality. I've also had way too much of our sensible American culture and would love to have an evening with a bunch of hedonists (Oscar Wilde, Colette, and Edith Sitwell would be perfect).

FS: Might you chat about your next project?

DT: I'm writing a book of narrative nonfiction, but I haven't told anyone what it is about yet. I've been doing lots of research, though, and hope to have it done by next year. THANKS!!!