Trussoni was born November 9, 1973 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and was named after her father Daniel Trussoni. She was one of three children (she had a brother and a younger sister). When her mother divorced her father, she chose to go with him rather than with her mother and siblings. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin—Madison summa cum laude with a BA in History and English in 1996; and from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she received an MFA in Fiction Writing in 2002.

Trussoni was a visiting writer-in-residence at Shake Rag Alley in Mineral Point, Wisconsin from September 2008 through May 2009. Retrieved on 2009-05-03.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Telegraph Magazine, The New York Times Book Review and Tin House, among other publications.

Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir, which dealt with her efforts to understand her father and his experiences as a tunnel rat in the War in Vietnam, was chosen by The New York Times as one of the Ten Best Books of 2006. Falling Through the Earth was recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, Elle Magazine’s Reader’s Choice Award for April 2006 and was chosen as a Book Sense Pick for March 2006.

Her novel Angelology, (Viking Press, 2010) received a great deal of attention prior to publication. Seven publishing houses vied for the publishing rights. Two motion picture companies, Columbia and Universal, bid for the film rights, which went to Columbia. Retrieved on 2009-17-02. Trussoni is planning a series and is already at work on a second book, Angelopolis.