Just Jennifer

Fortress by Danielle Trussoni

In her second memoir, the author of the religious thriller Angelogy recounts her marriage and the time she spent living with her family in a medieval castle in a small town, Aubais (which ominously rhymes with “obey”)in the south of France in a last ditch attempt to save her marriage.  Trussoni met her Bulgarian husband Nikolai during her time at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was completely swept off of her feet; Nikolai charmed Trussoni and her two-year-old son Alex and she readily agreed to marry him.  Visa and immigration issues led the couple to move to Bulgaria where they lived with Nikolai’s parents and Trussoni uttered her first Bulgarian words when she said “I do” at her wedding; already several weeks pregnant, Trussoni assumed the family would be able to return to the United States; not so: Trussoni, who was beginning to feel trapped, could return to the States (with her son) to give birth but her husband would not be able to accompany her.  Once their daughter was born, the small family never seemed to completely meld.  Nikolai had a daughter from his first marriage, a daughter her rarely saw, and though he was very attentive to his new daughter Nico, he and Trussoni where faltering.  Trussoni thought if the family was to start over together, maybe in a different country, things would be better and so she found a medieval castle in France, a castle with secret passages and secrets rich in history from the Crusades through the Nazi occupation of France. Instead of working its magic on the family, it seemed to have the opposite effect on Trussoni’s husband and eventually the two were living in separate sections of the castle sharing “custody” of their young daughter.  A divorce was inevitable and despite Nikolai’s best efforts, Trussoni was granted full custody of their daughter, another daughter Nikolai no longer has contact with.  Living in New York City, Trussoni is able to view this time in her life with a certain clarity, if not at times with a dreamlike distance, as if the experience happened to someone else, and tells the story of this chapter of her life, with a visceral honesty that can only come from a seasoned writer and observer.