Quick Take
- Narration: Tom Ryan narrates his own memoir with the journalistic precision of someone who spent years writing about his community, and his voice for Atticus, conveyed through description and observation rather than anthropomorphism, is one of the audiobook’s quiet achievements.
- Themes: Grief and reinvention, the unexpected companionship of an animal, endurance as a spiritual practice
- Mood: Brisk and clear-eyed in the mountain sections, warmer and more reflective in the Newburyport material
- Verdict: A memoir about mountains and a miniature schnauzer that is actually about loss, purpose, and what it means to take on something larger than yourself.
I listened to Following Atticus on a cold morning in February, which turned out to be precisely the right atmospheric context. Tom Ryan and his miniature schnauzer Atticus M. Finch set out to climb all forty-eight of New Hampshire’s four-thousand-foot White Mountains twice in the dead of winter, raising money for cancer research in memory of a friend. That is the scaffolding. What the memoir is actually about is harder to summarize: the transformation of a man who was good at describing other people’s lives and had not yet decided what his own life was for.
Ryan had been the editor of a local political journal in Newburyport, Massachusetts, reviled by some and loved by many, as reviewer Peter Riley put it, for his intrepid reporting and courageous stands. He was by his own account not someone you would have put down to be crossing the White Mountains in blizzard conditions behind a dog who weighed about eighteen pounds. That gap between the person at the start of the story and the person who completes the challenge is where the memoir finds its meaning, and Ryan is honest about the width of it.
Our Take on Following Atticus
The comparison to Into Thin Air and Marley and Me in the marketing copy places the book in two distinct traditions: the extreme mountaineering narrative and the dog memoir. Ryan is writing in both simultaneously, and the combination works because neither element overwhelms the other. Atticus is not anthropomorphized into a furry person with human interior states. He is described as the Little Buddha, which captures something real about how dogs manage to be present in ways that humans find instructive, without crossing into projection. The relationship reads as genuine because Ryan lets the dog be a dog.
Reviewer Kelly described Atticus as teaching Ryan a great deal about life and love in their short time together, and that is the biographical thread the memoir follows: the first dog, Max, whose brief life and death changed what Ryan thought was possible for him, and then Atticus, who arrived as something more deliberate. The decision to take on the forty-eight peaks was not purely athletic. It was shaped by a particular kind of grief and a particular kind of wanting to do something that mattered.
Why Listen to Following Atticus
Ryan’s self-narration brings the journalistic cadence of his background to the memoir. He is accustomed to telling other people’s stories precisely, and the discipline of that practice is visible in how he tells his own. He does not over-explain or over-feel. The mountain sections have the clarity of someone who is describing terrain and conditions rather than performing struggle, which makes the genuinely difficult passages more effective than they would be in a more emotionally amplified delivery.
At nine hours and four minutes this is a satisfying length for the story it is telling. The Newburyport sections, which give context for who Ryan was before Atticus and before the mountains, are necessary but move efficiently. The winter mountaineering material is where the memoir earns its reputation, and Ryan’s narration of those sections has the particular quality of someone who has been cold and tired and kept going and is not making it more dramatic than it was.
What to Watch For in Following Atticus
The cancer research fundraising context shapes the emotional stakes of the challenge in ways that are easy to underestimate. Ryan and Atticus are not climbing for personal achievement. They are climbing in memory of a woman named Patty, and that dedication gives the physical difficulty a specific rather than abstract meaning. Reviewer mias noted the story made her laugh and at times cry, and the emotional range that produces is built on that foundation of real loss rather than manufactured sentiment.
The community of White Mountains hikers that appears in the memoir is worth attending to. Ryan arrives as an outsider to this world and is received with a mixture of skepticism and warmth that reflects how mountain communities actually function. The social texture of those encounters gives the narrative a grounded quality that pure solo adventure memoirs sometimes lack.
Who Should Listen to Following Atticus
Dog lovers who find Marley and Me satisfying will find something here that is more austere and more demanding. Winter hiking enthusiasts will recognize the landscape Ryan describes and appreciate the technical specificity of his account. Readers who respond to memoir organized around physical challenge as a vehicle for emotional transformation, the Into Thin Air tradition, will find the White Mountains context intimate and accessible compared to Himalayan mountaineering. Those looking for a straightforward adventure narrative without significant interior reflection will want something with less quiet. This memoir has a lot of quiet in it, and the quiet is where it does its best work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this primarily a hiking memoir or a dog memoir?
Both, and Ryan handles the dual identity well. The mountaineering is the structural spine, with the forty-eight peaks providing shape and momentum, but Atticus is present in every section and the relationship between Ryan and his dog is the emotional center. Readers who come for one element will find the other genuinely rewarding rather than a distraction.
How technical is the hiking content?
Ryan is not a technical mountaineer, and the memoir reflects that. He describes conditions, trails, and the specific challenges of winter hiking in the White Mountains with journalistic clarity rather than specialist vocabulary. Experienced hikers will recognize the details; newcomers to hiking literature will not need specialized knowledge to follow or appreciate them.
Is Following Atticus part of a series, and do the subsequent books stand alone?
Ryan wrote a follow-up memoir, Will’s Red Coat, which focuses on a subsequent chapter in his and Atticus’s life in a different location. Following Atticus stands alone as a complete narrative with its own beginning, challenge, and resolution. Reading the follow-up requires no special preparation beyond familiarity with Ryan and Atticus as characters.
Why did Ryan choose to climb all forty-eight peaks in winter specifically, rather than in better conditions?
The winter challenge was driven partly by fundraising ambition, completing the peaks twice in one season being more demanding and therefore more significant as a fundraising statement, and partly by the timing of the commitment Ryan made in memory of Patty. The memoir explains the decision in context, and Ryan is honest that the choice was more audacious than he fully understood when he made it.
