It's the dawn of the Great Recession. The future still looks good for most of us, including best friends Lou Bergman, Chuck Keller, and Neal Harding. But when Lou leaves Las Vegas to be with his girlfriend Michelle and family in his hometown of Chicago, the friends experience a fast unraveling of all they've tried to hold dear. They realize they need each other now more than ever if they're going to survive all of this death, love, unemployment, and alcoholism. Absurdly hilarious and universally tragic, Hope Idiotic is a late-stage coming-of-age novel that is a sardonic and heartbreakingly honest look at how people reveal their best and worst selves when faced with their most extreme self- and fate-inflicted troubles. The characters in this story have to learn that the hope that disappoints might be the only hope they have of ever saving themselves, and each other.