Hill Man, set in the Kentucky Hills, is the story of the ambitious and lustful Rady Cromwell and three women. According to Giles, Rady was emblematic of men in his time and place, "men who know no law but their own wills and desires, and have no evidence of conscience. Rady is no fiction. He is fact." Hill Man was the only novel Janice Holt Giles wrote using a pseudonym. Although appreciative of her first publisher, the religiously oriented Westminster Press, she became increasingly dismayed that editors trimmed her books down "to pure sweetness and light." Hill Man was her most provocative work and also allowed her to experiment in the racier mass market paperback genre. Citing concern for her burgeoning reputation (having published her first four books with a religious publisher and the last with Houghton Mifflin), Janice elected to use the pseudonym John Garth. After Hill Man, she settled in to producing the historical fiction that for the most part defined her literary career.