Grit, Wit, & Grace
When
war fills the news, it’s easy for our thoughts to turn to Vietnam. Danielle
Trussoni has had no choice. She was raised by a battle-scarred Vietnam vet,
a former “tunnel rat,” and that distant war shaped her life almost as much as
it shaped his.
Named by The New York Times as one of the 10 Best Books of 2006, Trussoni’s memoir, Falling Through the Earth, tells about her family’s fights, her father’s drinking and philandering, her own delinquency, and about a trip she took to Vietnam to try to make sense of the horrific stories she persuaded her father to share with her. With honesty and deep loyalty, she struggles to understand a man who is too broken to be a husband or father, and she conveys what she sees with courage and humor. The book was released by Henry Holt in February 2006 on the day her father died, and it is now in paperback from Picador.
Facing
a totally different but no less challenging life with a “lost” loved one is Abigail
Thomas, whose memoir A Three Dog Life (Harcourt, 2006) is about adjusting
to a new existence after her husband suffers a traumatic brain injury and can
live only in the present. Just as it supposedly takes three dogs to warm you on
“a three dog night,” Thomas needs her three dogs to help her see the simple joy
of wordless, loving and loyal company in time that has gotten as “tangled as fish
line.” Newsweek calls it “neither a downer nor a smug testimonial to the
triumphant human spirit, just the perfectly honed observations of a clear-eyed—and
witty—writer.” Stephen King says he thinks it’s the best memoir he’s ever read.
The daughter of Lewis Thomas (The Lives of a Cell), Thomas is the author of another memoir, Safekeeping, a novel, An Actual Life, two story collections and two children’s books.
Danielle Trussoni photo by Nikolai Grozni
All readings include a question & answer period and a reception with books by the author(s) for sale.
Suggested
Donation: $5 ($3 for HVWC members and those under age 18)
Programs and events at The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center are made possible, in part, by grants from the Bydale Foundation, the David G. Taft Foundation, the Orchard Foundation, and the Thendara Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by the Basic Program Support Grant of the Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government.