A Hard Life is a story about a Missouri family and their disasters brought on by our country's tragic nineteenth century Civil War. Ben Branch Walker was seven years old in 1864, near the end of the great war that divided our nation. At his family home in Stoddard County, Missouri, he was made to stand and watch as his innocent father was hung by a group of union soldiers led by Captain James Asbury of the U.S. Army. Soon thereafter, Branch's older brother, Jon David, rescued Branch from the union camp and committed a murder that would haunt him to his dying day, and forever change the Walker family's future. Missouri's civil war history is filled with terrible events and stories, but none illustrates the tragedies more than this tale aptly titled, A Hard Life.