Shepherd University professor Matthew Kushin holds his coming-of-age novel, “Beware the Smart Kids,” at the Shepherdstown Book Festival this past fall. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Matthew Kushin, of Shepherdstown, recently published his debut novel, “Beware the Smart Kids.”

Kushin, who is a communications professor in the Department of Contemporary Art, Communication and Theater at Shepherd University, said this is the second book he has published, with the first being a guide for teachers on how to create a social media course.

While his first book was created to support the work of his fellow social media teachers, his second book was written to teach and entertain a younger audience.

“After becoming a father, I started to think, ‘What kind of legacy am I leaving for my daughter? What can I do to stop chasing the next achievement?’ I really started to explore what research says about what really makes people happy, as opposed to what we learn, growing up in our society,” Kushin said. “After experiencing that, I wanted to create a class on media use, since I’m a social media professor.”

Through teaching his Happiness: Media Versus Reality class, Kushin realized how valuable discussing this subject matter could be, both for himself and for younger generations. He felt inspired, by this, to engage more young audiences in the conversation.

“Beware the Smart Kids” is available for purchase at Four Seasons Books and online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million. Courtesy photo

“I wrote this book, because I taught a class about happiness and media use, where we talked a lot about misperceptions about what makes us happy,” Kushin said. “I was looking to find a way to get the lessons from that class to a young audience. What better way to do that, than through a story?”

Kushin took a sabbatical last year, to write the book. He ended up completing it within a span of eight months.

“As a professor, I was on the front lines, you could say, of witnessing the teen and young adult mental health crisis,” Kushin said. “In the last few years, there’s been a dramatic rise in anxiety and feelings of hopelessness among young people. That was a real eye-opener, as a teacher, to see that.”

The coming-of-age novel was intended to serve as a response to the mental health crisis in the teenage population. It tells the story of a lonely high school troublemaker in a small Appalachian community whose life is turned upside down when an ex-convict returns to town.

“It’s kind of like ‘Good Will Hunting,’ in the regard that you have a troubled teen and an older mentor. The core relationship is between the two of them, in finding the steps toward happiness,” Kushin said. “It’s fiction, but there’s a lot of truth in it.

“My dream would be that people would read this story, as more of an examination of their own perceptions of happiness,” Kushin said.

And, while he may have written it for a younger audience in mind, the novel has the ability to appeal to those of any age, according to award-winning author Margaret Standafer.

“It is a story for teenagers — those who feel invisible, those who are hiding their pain, those who think they’ll never find the answers, those who are yearning for something but don’t know what,” Standafer said. “And it’s a story for ‘former teenagers’ who are now trying to raise and love a teenager but who have likely forgotten the hard parts of being one.”

“Beware the Smart Kids” is available for purchase at Four Seasons Books and online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-a-Million.