A JOURNALIST in America writes a book about his dog and the sentimental story goes on to sell an astonishing six million copies.

It sounds like the script for a Hollywood movie – and it is. The film Marley and Me, starring Jennifer Aniston, above, and Owen Wilson, opens in cinemas on Wednesday.

Wilson plays Pennsylvania journalist John Grogan while Aniston plays his wife Jenny.

Marley and Me, about Grogan's experiences with his young family and his pet labrador, was first published in 2005.

Americans couldn’t get enough of Grogan’s blend of humour and pathos, and the book sparked a publishing phenomenon – pet lit. The journalist wrote the book after a column in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the loss of his 13-year-old yellow Labrador retriever Marley prompted a massive response from the paper’s readers. Grogan realised that he had struck a chord and started to write the dog’s story.

Having a pet, says Grogan, “makes us better humans, more empathetic, kinder, more generous-spirited and responsible.”

Marley and Me is not the only pet bestseller in recent years. Last month, Vicki Myron’s memoir, Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World was published in the UK after making it to the bestsellers lists in the United States.

Now readers are being given the chance to find out more about the man behind Marley and Me, in Grogan’s autobiography, The Longest Trip Home.

The book tells the story of the reporter’s early life in Detroit and there is plenty of humour to be found in the juxtaposition of the author’s growing pains and his parents’ devout Catholicism.

As the boy grows into a teenager and becomes all too aware of the facts of life, there are plenty of things that he doesn’t particularly want to talk about in confession.

Grogan’s life story doesn’t have a dog at the heart of it this time, but the writing is warm and engaging and I found the whole book captivating.

Introducing his wife to his family and maintaining a peaceful relationship almost proves to be the author’s undoing, and marriage and babies have to be negotiated with care and diplomacy. The author frequently finds himself caught between his conscience, his parents and his wife.

It is only when his mother descends into dementia, and his father announces that he has a life-threatening illness, that Grogan’s family really comes together again.

The Longest Trip Home reminded me of Bill Bryson’s The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, focusing on childhood reminiscences in a genial manner.

Grogan’s humorous observations about family relationships and his honest assessment of his own shortcomings are very readable, and I look forward to the next instalment of his life story.

* JOHN Grogan grew up in Michigan, near Detroit, and got degrees at Central Michigan and Ohio state universities.

He became a journalist in his early teens, starting with an underground tabloid which parodied the nuns at his school.

He spent more than 20 years as an award-winning newspaper journalist in Michigan, Florida, and Pennsylvania, including a recent role as metropolitan columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

As a local reporter, covering local stories on car chases, murder and arson, he met his wife-to-be Jenny, also a journalist but with a distinct lack of Catholic faith. The author now lives in a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in eastern Pennsylvania with his wife and three children.

Grogan wrote The Longest Trip Home in the Linderman Library at LeHigh University near his home in Pennsylvania. In a recent blog, he revealed that he is unable to write at home because he realises that everyone else in his family is having fun except him.

He started writing the book immediately after quitting his job as a columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer in February, 2007.

The Linderman Library, with its soaring ceilings and stone fire places resembles “something out of a Harry Potter movie”, according to the author, but it proved to the perfect setting for him to find the peace of mind he needed to concentrate on his autobiography.

Grogan said on his website: “It was a place meant for quiet study, and yet I could be surrounded by students and teachers deep in their own work. Their energy was contagious.

"That's where I ended up writing most of The Longest Trip Home, sitting with my laptop at a big oak table.

"It suited me well and I would stay for hours at a time, lost in my story.”

The Longest Trip Home is published by Hodder & Stoughton, price £16.99.