When Hack’s cover artist Jonny M.’s brother Joe (an outdoorsman who serves as the inspiration for the Junior Ranger books) told Hack that he was “doing the Grand Canyon rim to rim,” it set Hack’s imagination on fire. All Joe meant was that he would be hiking from the south to north rim of the canyon (or the north to south rim, I didn’t care enough to confirm which one) but, Hack being Hack, he thought “rim to rim” meant some kind of deviant sexual practice. So he wrote this book, getting around the wholesome business model of Boys Adventures by making Lucifer the sicko who leads Joe down the path of perversion and pretending the thing was actually a religious parable.
It sold like gangbusters in the Bible Belt and won an award from the Catholic Legion of Decency.
