Ethan Ward has spent his life learning to take one more step. The lesson carries him from a childhood baseball field into the Army, through war and catastrophic injury, and into a life he once had no reason to expect: a wife, four children, and a home in the Utah desert. Then life takes it all back. Years later, as war reaches American soil, Ethan joins thousands seeking evacuation at Sanctuary, a repurposed stadium offering the possibility of survival. But as the system begins to fail and the numbers stop making sense, Ethan must decide how long a person can keep going when there is no reason left to believe anything is coming. The Empty Cup is a literary novel about endurance, loss, love, hope, and the dangerous certainty that comes from believing we know how the story ends.