( CNN ) -- Norman Ollestad remembers the tree limb . The book 's jacket features a picture of a 1-year-old Norman clinging to his father 's back on a surfboard . He was 11 years old , riding in a Cessna in a blizzard through California 's San Gabriel Mountains in 1979 , on his way to pick up a trophy he won in a skiing competition . `` The gray clouds were just pressing against the windows ; it did n't even seem like we were moving , '' he recalls . `` Then , there 's a limb reaching out of that fog and disappearing . Then another one and another one . `` Then realizing we were in the trees . '' The plane crash that followed killed his father and the pilot and badly wounded his father 's girlfriend , who with young Norman was tossed violently onto the top of an 8,600-foot mountain in the freezing , February chill . `` I felt three thuds . The third one must have knocked me cold , '' says Ollestad , now 41 . `` I remember feeling those thuds in my spine -- a clear memory of that . Then I woke up who knows how long after . '' The ensuing nine-hour , life-or-death descent -- in the end , he was the only survivor -- is the topic of `` Crazy for the Storm : A Memoir of Survival . '' Watch the press conference that followed his survival » . But the book is about more than a plane crash , namely his relationship with an adrenaline-junkie father who basked in the wild life of Malibu in the 1970s and relentlessly pushed his `` Boy Wonder '' to excel from the ski slopes of northern California to the crashing surf off the Mexican coast . `` It 's actually 100 percent about my relationship with my father , '' Ollestad said . `` That relationship was present on the mountain with me , even though he was dead . '' Released this month , the book already has been picked up by Warner Bros. [ a sister company of CNN ] for a feature film and has earned critical acclaim , including comparisons to John Krakauer 's 1997 nonfiction best-seller `` Into Thin Air . '' `` An engrossing story of adventure , survival and psychological exploration , '' wrote the journal Kirkus Reviews . In the book , Ollestad cuts back and forth between the crash and journey down the mountain and the years leading up to that moment . Included are memories of life in Malibu , where he grew up the son of divorced parents in a cottage on the beach . There are surfers and skate rats , musicians and nudists and memories of smoking weed and spying on his neighbors ' most intimate moments . But mostly there 's his father , Norman Ollestad Sr. , an athlete , actor , lawyer , musician and former FBI agent . From the age of 3 , Norman was groomed for competitive `` extreme sports '' by his father and pushed to be the best . The book 's jacket features a picture of a 1-year-old Norman clinging to his father 's back as he steers a surfboard atop the waves of California 's Topanga State Beach . He acknowledges that many times , when his father was cooking up a new adventure for the two of them , he would rather have been `` riding my bike or eating chocolate cake . '' `` [ At first ] a lot of people are , 'Wow .. I had a lot of trouble with some of the stuff your dad was doing , ' `` says Ollestad , who studied creative writing at UCLA and attended UCLA 's film school . `` But then it turned out that a lot of that stuff was really beautiful . '' And he believes it saved his life . The skiing made him aware of how steep the mountain 's slope was and what it would take to get down it without falling . The skiing and surfing gave him control of his body and awareness of the exact movements required to work his way out of the descent 's most treacherous spots . `` Some of it was sort of eerily , specifically perfect for the situation , '' he says . `` Forty-five degree pitch , blizzard with ice , well , I 've been here for eight years doing this . It was familiar to me . '' The book has had another , unexpected result for Ollestad , who now lives in Venice , California . He says he 's been shocked at the e-mail from readers . `` Nobody 's even written about the plane crash , '' he says . `` [ They say ] 'it reminds me of some of the things I did with my dad or some of the things I did n't get to do . ' `` In every e-mail , whether it 's a woman or a man , they talk about ... their relationship with their father or mother . It touches something in there where they want to talk about it . '' Now , for Ollestad , the story has followed him all the way around . He 's the father of an 8-year-old , Noah , and seeks to walk the line between responsible parenting and teaching his child the lessons he says saved his life . `` Those were different times , '' he tells the boy in the book 's epilogue . `` My dad made me do lots of things that I 'd get arrested for making you do . ''
Norman Ollestad was 11 years old when the plane he was in crashed . Ollestad 's father died and Ollestad climbed down the mountain for nine hours . Experience is present in book `` Crazy for the Storm : A Memoir of Survival '' Book also chronicles Ollestad 's relationship with his father .