Nate Expectations

Product Description

“The Nate series by Tim Federle is a wonderful evocation of what it’s like to be a theater kid. Highly recommended.” —Lin-Manuel Miranda, star and creator of the musical, Hamilton

“An exceptional swan song for a beloved character.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Third time’s a charm! Nate Foster returns home to Jankburg, Pennsylvania, to face his biggest challenge yet—high school—in this final novel in the Lambda Literary Award–winning Nate trilogy, which The New York Times calls “inspired and inspiring.”

When the news hits that
E.T.: The Musical wasn’t nominated for a single Tony Award—not one!—the show closes, leaving Nate both out of luck and out of a job. And while Nate’s cast mates are eager to move on (the boy he understudies already landed a role on a TV show!), Nate knows it’s back to square one, also known as Jankburg, Pennsylvania. Where horror (read: high school) awaits.

Desperate to turn his life from flop to fabulous, Nate takes on a huge freshman English project with his BFF, Libby: he’s going to make a musical out of Charles Dickens’s
Great Expectations. (What could possibly go…right?) But when Nate’s New York crush ghosts him, and his grades start to slip, he finds the only thing harder than being on Broadway is being a freshman — especially when you’ve got a secret you’re desperate to sing out about.

This magical conclusion to Tim Federle’s beloved Nate series is a love letter to theater kids young and not-so-young—and for anyone who ever wondered if they could truly go home again. Especially when doing so means facing everything you thought you’d left behind.

Review

An exceptional swan song for a beloved character. ―
Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

If you know the difference between a cast album and a soundtrack, this is the book for you! ―
Booklist Online

About the Author

Tim Federle is “a prolific scribe whose breezy wit isn’t bound to a single genre” (
Huffington Post). Tim’s award-winning novels include 
The New York Times Notable Books 
The Great American Whatever and the Nate series—which Lin-Manuel Miranda called “a wonderful evocation of what it’s like to be a theater kid.” Tim cowrote both the Tony-nominated Broadway musical 
Tuck Everlasting, and the Golden Globe– and Oscar–nominated Best Animated Feature 
Ferdinand, starring John Cena and Kate McKinnon. A native of San Francisco who grew up in Pittsburgh, Tim now divides his time between New York and the internet (@TimFederle).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Nate Expectations

Not Bitter!!
So . . . some breaking news.

The show didn’t get a single Tony Award nomination.

I suppose I should get that out now, in case you think the rest of this is gonna be the enlightened thoughts of a famous person. Just don’t want to disappoint you.

E.T.: The Musical did get an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination. For costumes. (Yay.) But, look, if you saw the way the rubber E.T. suit glistens in the spotlight, and how the audience oohs and aahs over the whole cast in alien garb for the curtain call (we tap dance!), you’d nominate us for costumes, too.

Correction. Unless you’re a Tony Awards nominator. In which case, you’d think we’d opened several seasons ago. Or never opened at all!

Not bitter.

“Well, this is awkward,” one of my dressing roommates says. We’re five floors up, backstage at the Shubert Theater, and nobody’s making eye contact. The nominations came out this morning. (Well, other shows’ nominations did. Not us!)

“Agreed,” I manage to kind of say. I’m actually surprised how emotionally it comes out—I thought I’d gotten all my tears out back at Aunt Heidi’s place, in Queens. She handed me a square of toilet paper (she says Kleenex is a waste) and murmured something about how “crying in Queens is redundant.” Adults like to talk in poetry, did you know that?

Knock-knock. The “nice” stage manager (Lori, not Ashlee, who hates kids) is at our dressing-room door. Stage managers are li