Professor Andrew Pessin may be Connecticut College’s newest literary superstar. The only problem: no one would know it. His debut novel, 2012’s The Second Daughter received honorable mention at the New England Book festival and was just republished by Winter Goose Publishing this past October. It seems strange then, that nowhere—not on physical copies of the book, not on its Amazon page and not even on its official website—is Pessin’s name mentioned.
Instead, The Second Daughter is attributed to J. Jeffrey, described on Amazon as someone who “writes biographies full of lies, or are they novels full of truths? Such a fine line.”
In reality, J. Jeffrey and Andrew Pessin are one and the same. More accurately, J. Jeffrey is the pseudonym Pessin chose to publish The Second Daughter under. His decision to use a penname serves multiple purposes. Foremost, Pessin is a philosophy professor at Conn and wished to separate his work in philosophy from his fiction. Second, the name J. Jeffrey carries some significance within the novel itself.
“Ultimately, you need to read the book,” Pessin said. “Therein the pseudonym is revealed.”
Sound intriguing? It’s but one of many curiosities that The Second Daughter has to offer.
The novel revolves around a family on the brink of falling apart, a secret past that threatens to rear its ugly head once more, and the efforts of the family’s second daughter, Debra, to love in spite of it all. At heart, it’s a story about parental regret that has been described as “a complete delight,” in equal parts funny and touching.
“The novel doesn’t have a descriptive hook,” Pessin said in reference to exactly what The Second Daughter is about, but he went on to note that “the quality of the novel is the quality of the writing.”
The idea of writing about parenthood and regret came to Pessin a few years prior to starting the novel, when—as a father—he realized that being a parent “turns you into a person you don’t necessarily want to be.” The thought of “wanting to avoid the person parenting makes you become” was the seed for the novel. Pessin said he could imagine himself—years from now—looking back on his own experiences as a parent as the “endpoint of the novel.” Once he had that he said, “all I had to do was write the story that got to the endpoint.” What came out was The Second Daughter.
Although it is his first published novel, Pessin has always loved writing fiction and even noted that he wrote quite a bit while in graduate school. “I actually wrote a novel in graduate school; I think it’s still in the desk of the drawer I used to write in,” he said jokingly.
Aside from his grad-school writing, Pessin’s career has mainly been focused on philosophy. He has published several books on philosophy and has been teaching in Conn’s philosophy department since 2005.
Upon returning to writing fiction, Pessin said, “I finally hit this stage in my life and career a couple years ago—if not now, when?”
While philosophy has occupied much of Pessin’s career thus far, he stressed the fact that The Second Daughter is completely different from his scholarly work. “It’s not a novel about exploring philosophical ideas,” he said, although he did note that he used many of the same techniques he utilizes in his philosophical work while writing The Second Daughter. “I’m the same person doing both things. In many ways, I approach it with the same strategies. Like philosophy, the entire novel is one long argument leading to that conclusion.”
The Second Daughter was originally self-published in 2012. Pessin said that the self-publishing model was “essentially as easy as: upload a file and wait 30 seconds. Then it’s for sale all over the world.” However, there were downsides to not having a publisher.
“There’s a lot of self-published work out there,” Pessin said. “As a reader, how does one weed through the morass? As a writer, how does one get one’s own work to stick out?” Recognizing the challenges of self-publishing, Pessin set to work tirelessly promoting his novel, setting aside a small budget for advertising and sending copies to various interested outlets.
“It took all my effort for three months,” Pessin said, noting how exhausting it was to self-promote the book without a publisher. Eventually, he realized that there was only so much he could do by himself. “Word of mouth only goes so far. I wanted this novel to be read, so I thought that maybe the process is to go find a publisher.” Pessin did just that, and last month Winter Goose Publishing re-released The Second Daughter.
Pessin has continued promoting the book in whatever ways he can. He has attended local book club meetings to discuss the novel, and even found that he received a lot of useful feedback through doing so.
While he has enjoyed aspects of promoting The Second Daughter, Pessin said that making the novel was the best part for him. “The writing to me is nothing but fun… I think if I were on a desert island I would be writing fiction.” He finds it to be a nice break from his work in philosophy and plans on continuing in the future.
Pessin is currently working on-and-off on a new novel, which he describes as “a historical murder mystery, featuring some philosophers as characters.” He hopes to revise the first draft next summer. As for his most recent novel Pessin said, “I loved every minute I was working on it. It’s icing on the cake if it turns out it’s successful and people like it and read it.”•
