LA Noir by Norman Ollestad. Norman Ollestad Jr. (born May 30, 1967) is an American author. At the age of eleven, he was the only survivor of a plane crash that claimed the life of his father. He wrote about it in his 2009 bestseller Crazy For The Storm: A Memoir Of Survival. His subsequent book, French Girl with Mother, a novel, came out in October 2016.