Norman Ollestad (born May 30, 1967) is an American author of contemporary fiction and non-fiction. Ollestad is also an avid surfer and skier. On February 19, 1979, he was in a plane crash with his father; his father's girlfriend, Sandra; and the pilot of a chartered Cessna. Sandra was 30. Norman's father was 43. Norman was 11. By the end of the 9-hour ordeal, Norman was the only survivor. He wrote about the tragedy in his 2009 bestseller Crazy For The Storm: A Memoir Of Survival. He has also written a novel, 'Driftwood', which was released in 2006.
Ollestad was born to Norman and Doris Ollestad. He was raised in the raw and uninhibited surfside community of Topanga Beach, in Malibu, California. He was thrust into the world of surfing and competitive downhill skiing at a very young age by the father he idolized. Often paralyzed by fear, young Norman resented losing his childhood to his father’s reckless and demanding adventures, even as he began to reap the rewards of his training. He rode his first wave at just a year old, via a makeshift papoose strapped to his father’s back. Years later he would prove a talented and competitive hockey player and skier, winning the Southern California Slalom Skiing Championship at age 11.
Then, in February 1979, a chartered Cessna carrying 11-year old Norman, his father, his father’s girlfriend and the pilot, crashed into Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains. Norman’s father...a man who was both his coach and hero -... was dead, his girlfriend soon to follow. Suspended at over 8,000 feet and engulfed in a blizzard, the grief-stricken boy descended the icy mountain alone. Putting his father’s passionate lessons to work, Norman defied the elements and made it through alive...the sole survivor of the crash. As he told the Los Angeles Times after his ordeal, “My dad told me never to give up.”
As an adolescent, and young adult, Norman resumed the pursuit of the passions that fueled his father’s adventure-seeking nature. Traveling to St. Anton in the Austrian Alps, he re-discovered a love for fresh backcountry powder — an appreciation that had once been imposed upon him by his father. It was during his time living in European ski resorts that Ollestad decided to become a writer. He returned to Los Angeles and enrolled in UCLA Film School where he also studied creative writing.
In 2006 Ollestad began the process of returning to the painful memories of the event that claimed his father’s life in preparation for writing Crazy For The Storm. Returning to the steep mountainside of the crash site, Ollestad found pieces of wreckage, and reconnected with the family who gave him shelter after he emerged from his long struggle to safety.
Crazy For The Storm: A Memoir of Survival is Norman Ollestad's 2009 bestselling book. It's a memoir about survival and adventure, as told from the point of view of Norman as an 11-year-old boy growing up in Topanga Beach, CA.
Set in Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s, the memoir captures the bohemian surf culture of Southern California and a boy’s conflicted feelings for his magnetic, larger-than-life father. The story recounts the exhilarating tests of skill that prepared Norman to become a surfer and ski champion...the same skills that ultimately saved his life.
As said in The Los Angeles Times, "The book alternates between a detailed account of the plane crash and Ollestad’s story of his parents’ busted marriage. Of particular interest is his charismatic, adrenaline-junkie father, whom the young Norman describes as a somewhat methodical, somewhat reckless “enchanter,” devotedly driving his son to early-morning hockey practices and faraway ski tournaments but also dragging him along to Mexico, where they wound up stranded in the jungle without food or money after fleeing bribe-seeking federales wielding guns."
Critical Reception
In June 2009, the memoir was released and quickly became one of the most talked about books of the summer. Norman cracked both the top ten bestseller lists for The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. Crazy For The Storm was also selected as Starbucks June book selection and iTunes picked it as one of the best summer reads. Most recently, it was chosen by Amazon as one of the 'Best Books of the Year...So Far'.
Film Adaptation
In early May 2009, Warner Bros. picked up the option to turn Crazy for the Storm into a major motion picture. No decisions seem to have been made yet on a director or screenwriter, nor on a cast.
Ollestad calls the Crazy For The Storm a tribute to his gregarious and charismatic father. Norman Ollestad Sr. had been a child actor, appearing in the movie Cheaper by the Dozen. Later he joined the FBI, but soon grew disillusioned with J. Edgar Hoover and wrote a book called Inside The FBI, which did not endear him to his former employers. He later retreated to the hippie enclave of Topanga Beach, at the south end of Malibu, where he surfed and worked as a lawyer.
Ollestad sketches life at Topanga as nearly idyllic: Surfing just outside the front door, naked people on the beach, a cluster of simple houses on the sand (now long gone, bulldozed to make way for movie-star mansions). The book Crazy for the Storm opens with a photo of his father taking Norman surfing, in a baby carrier.
It is his father who towers over the story, with his hunger for life and new experiences of all kinds, good and bad...pushing Norman, whom he dubs "Boy Wonder," into all sorts of situations that seem reckless now.
Ollestad continues to travel far and wide to find un-crowded, high-quality waves. His latest adventures include mainland Mexico, Central America and atolls off Timor in Indonesia. Skiing remains an equal passion to surfing...taking his son, who is on the Mammoth Ski Team, into the wilderness when the powder is good.
