Wide is the Gate

Plot

In this novel Lanny Budd's marriage to Irma breaks down after he imposes on her to help smuggle a revolutionary named Trudy out of Germany. Her husband Ludi had been arrested and vanished into the Gestapo prison system. Months later Lanny, at a séance, hears that Ludi is dead. He persuades Trudy that Ludi is dead and they secretly marry.

Meanwhile, Lanny gets interested in Spain, and is in Barcelona for a Socialist Olympics, in competition to the Berlin games, when the Spanish Civil War breaks out. The son of Lanny's English friend Rick enlists in the Republican cause. In the climax at the end of the novel the son has been captured by the Nationalists and Lanny undertakes a dangerous attempt to spring the son from captivity and send him home to England.