What began as a family history project has led a Vista man to unearth a connection between one of America's literary giants and an unlikely place: Saudi Arabia.

This month, Vista-based Selwa Press is releasing the first U.S. edition of Wallace Stegner's "Discovery! The Search for Arabian Oil," a history of the Arabian American Oil Co.'s first dozen years.

Stegner wrote "Discovery!" in the 1950s on commission from the company, then called Aramco.

It describes the arrival of the first American geologists to explore the Arabian desert, and later, the wildcatters who built the first oil wells. Stegner portrays their exploits as a brave adventure, yet subtly examines the cultural clashes between the Americans and Saudis.

After receiving Stegner's manuscript, the company's public relations officials put it in a box for a decade, apparently reluctant to do anything that might upset the Saudi-American relationship, delicate then as now.

Although an edited, serialized "Discovery!" was published in the Aramco company magazine in the 1960s and in Beirut in 1971, it was never sold in the United States.

Tim Barger, founder of Selwa Press, came across references to the manuscript while collecting letters written by his father, Tom, who arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1937 as a junior geologist and became president of Aramco in the 1950s.

"I found all these wonderful pictures he never told me existed, and it sort of pulled me into that time," said Barger, who grew up in Saudi Arabia and works as an industrial videographer.

He self-published an illustrated book of his father's letters in 2002. Then two years ago, Barger asked the company, now owned by the Saudi government and called Saudi Aramco, for permission to reprint Stegner's book.

"It took a year and a half to get from 'yes' to a written contract," he said.

Literary coincidence

Stegner's readers may be more familiar with his novels, including "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" or "Angle of Repose," which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1972.

The founder of Stanford University's creative writing program, he taught authors such as Ken Kesey, Wendell Berry, Raymond Carver and Larry McMurtry.

Stegner, who died in 1993, also wrote a biography of John Wesley Powell, the first person of European descent to explore the Grand Canyon. Stegner was a leader of the Sierra Club's effort to preserve Western wilderness in the 1960s.

But in the 1950s, neither Stegner nor Aramco had reached the stature that they later would attain.

A January article in the Stanford alumni magazine stresses the irony that Stegner, who shaped the thinking of the environmental movement, worked for the public relations arm of what became the largest oil company in the world.

"It was a fateful coincidence," Barger said.

The history begins with the 1932 negotiations between Lloyd Hamilton, lead representative of the Standard Oil Co. of California, now Chevron, and Sheikh Abdullah Suleiman, the Saudi finance minister.

Later on, the lead geologist, Max Steineke, played a large role, along with Khamis, a Bedouin hunter who skillfully guided the Americans through hundreds of miles of desert wilderness.

Stegner received the full assistance of Aramco - and close to $100,000 in today's money - and was flown to Saudi Arabia with his wife in 1955 to interview veteran employees.

Barger said Stegner's frank account of events in the company's history shows why executives didn't want to publish it.

For example, Stegner's description of the 1932 negotiations as a "high-stakes poker game" might offend conservative Muslims, who abhor gambling, he said.

In addition, Stegner was willing to describe an incident when an American oil worker beat up a Saudi man, Barger said. The author eventually wrote to the company and suggested having his name taken off the manuscript after executives proposed several deletions and modifications.

Political sensitivity

Robert Vitalis, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that political tensions in the 1950s explain why Aramco officials were so sensitive.

At the time, Aramco, which became a lucrative joint venture for several American oil firms, had faced scrutiny by the Senate for its role in influencing oil prices.

The pan-Arab ideology of Egypt's vigorous new president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, was attracting attention, and the Saudis were pressing the company for a renegotiation of its concession agreement.

"It was a moment when the U.S-Saudi relationship was getting beaten up," Vitalis said in a phone interview. "Anything (Aramco) published could be turned against them."

Vitalis is the author of a book on Aramco that criticizes the company's segregated arrangements at its camps for oil workers in the 1930s.

In Stegner's largely benign account, Vitalis said, the Americans had to get used to Arabian cultural norms, such as only eating with the right hand because the left hand is reserved for bathroom functions. In turn, the Saudis

benefitted from learning about American technology.

Stegner also wrote about the nomadic Bedouin in a way that recalled how the American oil workers viewed American Indians.

"Even in a region apparently empty of humanity, they had the knack that some of the Americans had observed among the Navajo," he wrote. "Beside a broken car or a stranger afoot or mounted, they could appear out of the ground."

Barger said that Stegner shows insight into the complex relationships between the Americans and the

Saudis, considering the period when he was writing and the audience he was writing for.

"You can't expect people from that time to think like people from the present," Barger said. "These were guys who came from working in oil fields in Oklahoma and Texas."

He cited the Ottoman tradition of having segregated quarters of cities, and said Saudis wanted to keep American cultural influence contained.

New ventures

Barger's excursion into Arabian history has led Selwa Press to publish work by a female Saudi poet, Nimah

Ismail Nawwab.

She gave what Newsweek described as the Saudi kingdom's first coed book signing in Jiddah in 2005.

The next work Selwa is scheduled to publish is a biography of Col. William Eddy, the first American diplomat to serve in Saudi Arabia, Barger said. The author is Thomas Lippman, a former Washington Post reporter.

Barger is scheduled to sign books and give a presentation on "Discovery!" at 6 p.m. Friday at the Barnes & Noble in Oceanside, 2615 Vista Way.

- Book signing

Tim Barger of Selwa Press will sign books and give a presentation on 'Discovery!' at 6 p.m. Friday at Barnes & Noble, 2615 Vista Way in Oceanside.