- Norman Ollestad
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Norman Ollestad Born May 30, 1967 Occupation Writer Notable work(s) Crazy For The Storm: A Memoir Of Survival
Influences- Milan Kundera, Lucian Freud, Pablo Picasso, Jhumpa Lahiri, Cormac McCarthy, Mavis Gallant, Ernest Hemingway, Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Kelly Slater, Jean-Luc Godard, Clint Eastwood, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gus Van Sant, Richard Avedon, Gustav Klimt, Woody Allen, Helmut Newton, Ingmar Bergman, Jim Harrison, Russell Banks
crazyforthestorm.comNorman Ollestad (born May 30, 1967) is an American author of contemporary fiction and non-fiction. Ollestad is also an avid surfer and skier. At the age of eleven, he was the only survivor of a plane crash that claimed the life of his father. 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.
Contents
Early life
Ollestad was born to Norman and Doris Ollestad, and was raised in Topanga Beach, Malibu, California. He was thrust into the world of surfing and competitive downhill skiing at a very young age by his father and later said that he resented losing his childhood to his father’s reckless and demanding adventures.[citation needed] He became a competitive hockey player and skier, winning the Southern California Slalom Skiing Championship at age 11.
On February 19, 1979, a chartered Cessna carrying 11-year old Ollestad, his father, his father’s girlfriend, and the pilot, crashed into Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains. Ollestad’s father died in the crash, and his girlfriend shortly after. Suspended at over 8,000 feet and engulfed in a blizzard, Ollestad descended the mountain with Sandra, his father's girlfriend, but she died after a fall down a shute. Norman was the sole survivor of the crash. He later told the Los Angeles Times that “My dad told me never to give up.”[1]
Ollestad later traveled to St. Anton in the Austrian Alps, and 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 crash in preparation for writing Crazy For The Storm. Returning to the crash site, Ollestad found pieces of wreckage, and reconnected with the family who had given him shelter once he reached safety.
Crazy For The Storm
Crazy For The Storm: A Memoir of Survival is Norman Ollestad's 2009 bestselling[citation needed] book. Set in Malibu and Mexico in the late 1970s, the memoir describes the bohemian surf culture of Southern California and Ollestad's conflicted feelings towards his father. The story recounts the tests of skill that prepared Norman to become a surfer and ski champion, and which later helped to save his life.
The Los Angeles Times wrote "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."[2]
In June 2009, the memoir was released and quickly became one of the most talked about books of the summer[citation needed]. The book reached the top ten bestseller lists for both 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[when?], it was chosen by Amazon as one of the 'Best Books of the Year...So Far'.
In early May 2009, Warner Bros. picked up the option to turn Crazy for the Storm into a motion picture.
Norman Ollestad, Sr.
Ollestad calls Crazy For The Storm a tribute to his 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[citation needed]. He later retreated to the hippie enclave of Topanga Beach, at the south end of Malibu, where he surfed and worked as a lawyer.
Bibliography
- Crazy For The Storm: A Memoir Of Survival (non-fiction, 2009)
- Driftwood (fiction, 2006)
References
- ^ Harper Collins "Crazy For The Storm". HarperCollins. May 25, 2009.
- ^ Rachel Abramowitz "Crazy For The Storm". Los Angeles Times. June 16, 2009.
External links
Categories:- 1967 births
- Living people
- American writers
- Sole survivors
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