Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival »

Norman Ollestad studied creative writing at UCLA and attended UCLA Film School. He grew up on Topanga Beach in Malibu and now lives in Venice, California. He is the father of a nine-year-old son.

A riveting and moving memoir, written in crisp Hemingwayesque prose and set amid the wild, uninhibited surf culture of Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s

From the age of three, Norman Ollestad was thrust into the world of surfing and competitive downhill skiing by the intense, charismatic father he both idolized and resented. Yet it was these exhilarating tests of skill that ultimately saved his life when the chartered Cessna carrying them to a ski championship ceremony crashed 8,000 feet up in the California mountains, leaving his father and the pilot dead. The devastated eleven-year-old Ollestad had to descend the treacherous, icy mountain alone.

Crazy for the Storm is a powerful and unforgettable true story that illuminates the complicated bond between an extraordinary father and his extraordinary son.

The Washington Post - Bill Gifford

…breathtaking…A portrait of a father's consuming love for his son, Crazy for the Storm will keep you up late into the night.