Earl O'Donnell sweats in the summer heat haunted by the death of his dog Daisy. Dennis Hayes daydreams of migration, caught in an endless loop from his apartment, to the bakery where he works, to Earl's bar the Idle Hour, to his apartment once more. Evelyn Smith needs to find someone to move her birdbath before winter. Tabitha Jenkins looks for a way off of the sinking ship of public education in Baltimore City while her former student Anna Price tries for success in the form of a graphic novel, Smog Bat: The Horror of the Harbor Tunnel. Idle Hour takes place in the dying waterfront community of Essex, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore City, following Earl, Dennis, Evelyn, Tabitha, and Anna over the course of a year. From beer deliveries, visits to River's Edge Nursing Home for bingo, Sunday mass, fears of gentrification and change, past loves revisited, crowd control at an impoverished middle school, to teenage drama at the local diner, Idle Hour reveals how five individuals ranging in age from nineteen to seventy-eight can all feel trapped in self-constructed prisons. As the seasons change, so do the characters, as one by one they find hope where they least expected.