Crazy for the Storm

March 23, 2009
In a spare, brisk prose, Ollestad tells the tragic story of the pivotal event of his life, an airplane crash into the side of a mountain that cost three lives, including his father’s, in 1979. Only 11 years old at the time, he alone survived, using the athletic skills he learned in competitive downhill skiing, amid the twisted wreckage, the bodies and the bone-chilling cold of the blizzard atop the 8,600-foot mountain. Although the narrative core of the memoir remains the horrifying plane crackup into the San Gabriel Mountains, its warm, complex soul is conveyed by the loving relationship between the former FBI agent father and his son, affectionately called the “Boy Wonder,” during the golden childhood years spent in wild, freewheeling Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s. Ollestad’s unyielding concentration on the themes of courage, love and endurance seep into every character portrait, every scene, making this book an inspiring, fascinating read.

August 31, 2009
Ollestad's memoir intersperses his harrowing childhood trauma as the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed his father with his coming of age in the '70s West Coast culture of surfing, skiing and skateboarding. A competent and engaging narrator, Ollestad evokes emotional intensity without descending into sentimentality and creates memorable portraits of his heroic father and his mother's abusive boyfriend. Granted, Ollestad presents his 11-year-old self as a tad more introspective and worldly wise than one might expect, but as the adult Ollestad reflects on how he was shaped by the hard-living, extreme sports culture of his family and community, the essence of a young man forced to grow up too quickly rings true. An Ecco hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 23).

May 15, 2009
An engrossing story of adventure, survival and psychological exploration.

Ollestad hits several notes that should make his memoir irresistible to those looking for page-turning but thought-provoking summer reading along the lines of Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (1997). In the winter of 1979, the 11-year-old Ollestad survived a plane crash in which his father and his father's girlfriend were killed. Alternating with young Norman's nine-hour trek to safety are scenes from the year preceding the crash, when the boy took a surfing trip with his father through the jungle along Mexico's Pacific coast. The flashbacks sections are the most fascinating parts of the book, and Ollestad ably captures the contrast between his charismatically cool father, Norman Sr., and his bullying stepfather-to-be, Nick. A photo of the elder Ollestad surfing with his one-year-old son strapped to his back captures the essence of the author's relationship with Norman Sr. He is convinced that his father's gentle but unyielding insistence that young Norman develop a sense of mastery over physical, emotional and mental challenges helped him survive the crash. The chapters that follow also suggest that his subtler ordeals with Nick were similarly important in the building of his character. Though some of the minutely detailed descriptions of his journey down the mountain read like creative-writing assignments gone awry, Ollestad presents a captivating account of high-altitude disaster that nicely dovetails with his coming-of-age story in'70s California.

Deep and resonant.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2009
Its almost too horrible to imagine: an 11-year-old boy is flying in a small plane with his father and his fathers girlfriend. The plane crashesslams into a mountainand the boys father is killed, along with the pilot. His fathers girlfriend is injured, and its up to the boy to get the two of them down the mountain before they freeze to death. A seemingly impossible task, but the boy, author Ollestad, was no ordinary 11-year-old. A sportsman like his father, he had just won a skiing championship; also like his father, young Norman was a not easily intimidated, evenwhen the odds were stacked against him. Ollestad tells the riveting story of his arduous trek down the mountain (the plane crashed more than 8,500 feet in the air), interspersing the story with scenes from his life with his father, allowing us to witness both the boys survival and his staggering loss at the same time. It is a poignant story, suspenseful (even though we know the outcome), and written in a vivid style that makes us feel like were there on the mountain with him.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)