For this book, we leaned into its epic scope: we brought in a professional cartographer to map Bassam’s world, then oversaw a full-audio production that Audible later featured as a ‘Hidden Gem’ and pushed into its top 40 audiobooks.
At the bottom of a hidden canyon in ancient Arabia lies the cave-city of Rekeem, a sunken crossroads carved into red rock. Travelers whisper that somewhere among its shadowed chambers lie seven scrolls—writings said to hold the secrets of wealth, leadership, and influence that built a legendary trading dynasty along the caravan routes.
Bassam ibn-Kateb, a mischievous orphan adopted by Rekeem’s aging scribe, has grown up on those stories. By day he helps his father count caravans beneath the towering pillars of Al Khazna; by night he dreams of the great merchant Zafir and the far-flung routes of Abdali-ud-Din. When Zafir returns from the east with a treasure-laden caravan and a proposal to take Bassam as his apprentice, the boy is thrust from canyon streets into the harsh, exhilarating world of the desert trade.
Under Zafir’s eye and the protection of the sword-brothers of Al Murrah, Bassam must learn the rules of the desert: how to read the stars with a kamal, find hidden cisterns, survive sandstorms and ambushes, and navigate the intricate politics of caravans, captains, and sheiks. At night, by the light of a single lamp, he writes in his journal—letters to his childhood friend Rasha—and slowly earns Zafir’s trust. Only then does the old trader reveal his greatest charge: seven ancient scrolls, carried in a worn leather bag, whose teachings on self-government, justice, mercy, and true wealth have guided Abdali-ud-Din for generations.
As the caravan pushes into the deep desert and beyond, Bassam faces bandits, traitors, and choices that test every lesson in the scrolls. To carry Zafir’s sword, guard the caravan’s gold, and someday inherit the Seven Scrolls of Wealth, he must confront the fiercest enemy of all—the one within himself.
Framed by the modern discovery of an ancient scroll in a museum and rich with desert lore, navigation tricks, and caravan life, Bassam and the Seven Secret Scrolls launches Paul B. Skousen’s sweeping Bassam Saga. It’s a coming-of-age epic for readers who love immersive historical adventure, moral stakes, and the timeless question at the heart of every great journey: what kind of person will you become once power is finally placed in your hands?
Category: Fiction
Release date: February 25, 2014
Page size: 6″ x 9″
Word count: 168,321
Estimated page count: 454
Paul B. Skousen is an author and instructor on the United States Constitution. He received his undergraduate from BYU in Journalism and his Master’s degree in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. After graduate school Paul worked for President Ronald Reagan in the White House Situation Room.
In addition, Paul was an intelligence officer for the CIA. He received national notoriety when he preserved a large bag of shredded top secret documents, the so-called “smoking gun” from the Iran-Contra Affair, that he sold piecemeal as “shredded secrets from the White House.” Paul Harvey and other media outlets covered the unusual story. Paul has extensive experience interviewing political and military leaders in Egypt, Israel and Jordan, including the former prime minister of Jordan, the political advisor to Egypt’s President Mubarak, and senior generals in the Israeli military
Paul is the author of six books including The Naked Socialist, Bassam and the Seven Secret Scrolls and Treasures from the Journal of Discourses. He has revised and edited several of his father’s books including Fantastic Victory, The Cleansing of America, The Five Thousand Year Leap Glenn Beck Edition, and The Majesty of God’s Law. He is currently writing the Biography of W. Cleon Skousen, among other projects, and is a frequent speaker and motivational instructor.
Additionally, Paul has been a columnist for The Daily Caller, and currently teaches communications and journalism at Utah Valley University.
Paul Skousen shows us he has the gifts of descriptive metaphors and modifiers of all kinds. He makes Bassam and the Seven Secret Scrolls so interesting, so down to earth, that a book one may never have considered reading becomes one which changes one’s soul.
Paul Skousen could be described as the Ayn Rand of the desert. He weaves a surprising message into a tapestry of unexpected threads, placing his protagonist in a very different environment than might be anticipated for a story of individual liberty and self-determination. Read it for yourself, give it to your (older) children, better still, give it to your liberal friends; everyone might learn something useful in addition to enjoying a rollicking good story.
This is a beautifully written story given to us as if it was a tale only the most esteemed sages, descendants of eons past, have deemed us worthy enough to pass it on to. Every word commands our attention as not a single one is to be missed or we may lose the meaning of the entire book. The excerpt has an ancient feel to it that leads me to imagine reading it by oil lamp in one of the caves described in the story. A mystery almost as vexing if not more than the one the author has written. I felt the excerpt to be one with almost magical powers.
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