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...