Jacob Walker and his family were caught up in a life-and-death struggle trying to survive the difficult years following the Great Depression of 1929. Jacob had lost his job due to the Depression and then moved his family to Braxton's holler in western Kentucky. Horace Braxton was a ruthless man who owned the Kentucky coal mine known as Braxton Camp, along with other mines in West Virginia. He held little regard for the families living in the holler, caring only for the wealth afforded him by the coal being dug from his mine on the mountainside.

The miners caught in Braxton Camp were paid in scrip, keeping them heavily in debt at the company store and assuring Braxton of cheap labor well into the future. Jacob Walker was a deeply spiritual man, leading his family in the ways of God through the desperate times in the holler, seeking God's sustaining grace over them. He dreamed of leaving the coal mines behind and moving his family to Kansas to farm wheat in God's fresh air above ground. Sadly, Jacob's dream would never come true, as one tragedy after another overtook those living under Horace Braxton's control.