Thursday, December 29, 2011
Book Talk: Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad
This week, it's me writing the column Book Talk. Anne and Cloie are busy writing future posts.
From Amazon: The story itself could take your breath away: an 11-year-old boy, the only survivor of a small-plane crash in the San Gabriel Mountains in 1979, makes his way to safety down an icy mountain face in a blizzard, using the skills and determination he learned from his father. But it's the way that Norman Ollestad tells his tale that makes Crazy for the Storm a memoir that will last.
This book was handed to me, in the same way a runner hands off a baton in a relay race. My co-teacher Anne passed it over last month. She hoped it would provide needed inspiration. I was in the midst of coaching a writer who just wasn’t getting the message.
After listening to me kvetch, Anne let me borrow her copy of Crazy for the Storm. 
I must confess this is not a book I would usually read. I’m not much for the “in your face” testosterone laden memoir. Afterall, what does Ollestad have to do? This story practically tells itself. The monumental tragedy, which happens in a relatively short time frame, is an obvious container. Stay in real time, tell the story and boom—bestseller. Plus it’s very masculine and heroic and let’s face it—a man’s book about a man being a man—well, you’ve got yourself a no-brain winner. This is America. John Wayne mythology abounds. Women want the Marlboro man to sweep them away. Men want to be that brink-living-brave hero.
Come on.
It’s too easy.
But then I started to read.
It wasn’t the tragedy that captured me. It wasn’t the bigger-than-big father who pushed himself and his son to the edge of human limits and beyond. It wasn’t the “do they survive” breath stealing quality either.
It was the writing.
I’m not sure Ollestad wrote this book–something in me suspects a ghostwriter lurks in the shadows–but in the end, who cares? Whoever wrote this book, there is great skill and craft here. Some of the lines took my breath away. And, Ollestad used a brilliant device to tell the story. He worked the front story (the accident and the hours that followed as he alone made his way off the mountain and away from the crash) in tandem with the backstory (a trip to Mexico with his dad which brought the reader up to speed with the life the young boy—pre-crash—was living with his screwed up mother, his abusive step father and his “live else where adventure hungry” dad). 
It works because he holds both the front and the back-story very close. He doesn’t wander around into every moment of his life with his father pre-crash and he doesn’t get sentimental which is something that would be easy to do when commemorating a manly man like his father. Instead Ollestad tells the story straight, stays close to a manageable time frame and never drops us from that time line.
As a memoir teacher, I would encourage all memoir writers to read this book. It’s so tight and clean and yes, obvious. But it’s the most obvious story line that can help you see your own container for your story. Ollestad (or his ghost writer) teaches us to keep things simple, keep it moving, keep it clear, keep it clean and most of all—keep it on the bone honest.
A valuable lesson for you waits in this book. Get it. Read it. Study it.
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