Meet John Nichols. He’s fifty-something years old, an ex-basketball player, ex-author, ex-philanderer, ex-husband, ex-high school English teacher. And he’s the father of three: two overachieving adult daughters and 19-year-old Ethan, who will never be an adult. John’s older daughter is getting married, and as the family members travel to the celebration, John is secretly preparing for a life change that will alter his family’s hearts forever.

The five Nichols’ are held together by love and humor, as well as the spiky parts of sisterly competition and a difficult baby brother. Parents John and Mary have devoted themselves to caregiving, and John especially finds himself caught in the tension between being a parent and being true to himself. So when a new challenge comes their way in the wake of a road trip and wedding plans, the family bonds are stretched and tested. Funny, heartbreaking, and generous, IT’S. NICE. OUTSIDE. asks: What happens when you have to let go of the person who has been holding you up?

JIM KOKORIS's work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine, USA Weekend, Chicago Sun-Times, and Reader's Digest. He is the author of the novels The Rich Part of Life, which has been published in fifteen languages and for which he won a Friends of American Writers Award for Best First Novel, and the critically acclaimed Sister North. A graduate of the University of Illinois, Jim lives in the Chicago area.