Book Reviews
Tragic and exotic.... The inventiveness that saved this brave boy from snowy oblivion doesn’t help shape the narrative he writes.... Mr. Ollestad falls back on the conventional format of cross-cutting, so that chapters about his pre-catastrophe childhood alternate with short, crisp, impressionistic glimpses of the plane crash and its aftermath.... At least Mr. Ollestad is very clear about the overall point that he wants to make. “There is more to life than just surviving it,” he writes. “Inside each turbulence there is a calm—a sliver of light buried in the darkness.”
Janet Maslin - New York Times
This book is not perfect: Some of the descriptive passages are difficult to follow, and perhaps less precise than they could be, so that we get lost in the fog on the mountain, just as we sometimes flounder in the author's own inchoate emotions around this traumatic and defining moment of his life. But these are minor complaints. A portrait of a father's consuming love for his son, Crazy for the Storm will keep you up late into the night.
Bill Gifford - Washington Post Book World
Cinematic and personal...Ollestad's insights into growing up in a broken home and adolescence in southern California are as engrossing as the story of his trip down the mountain.
Chicago Tribune
Never a dull moment....[Ollestad has] written a beautiful story about a thrill-loving father—"the man with the sunshine in his eyes"—who taught his boy not just how to live, but how to thrive.
Houston Chronicle
The memoir is as much about a father-son relationship as it is a survival story...Ollestad says his father's life philosophy about surfing and skiing—"knowing there's always a place to go and find peace, clear your mind"—got him down the mountain and through life.
USA Today
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.
Publishers Weekly
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.
Kirkus Reviews