Steve is looking forward to a relaxing (and perhaps romantic) time under the Spanish sun with his friend, Laia. But when an email from his brother DJ arrives, implicating their grandfather in shadowy international plots involving nuclear bombs, Steve and Laia put aside all thoughts of a lazy, sun-drenched vacation. In a desperate attempt to find out if Steve's grandfather was a Cold War-era spy, they crack mysterious codes, confront violent Russian mobsters, dodge spies, unearth a bomb and avoid nudists. But the more they uncover, the more Steve wonders: whose side was Grandpa really on?
Steve Is off to Spain, armed with only a letter from his grandfather that sends him to Barcelona. There he meets a girl named Laia and finds a trunk containing some of his grandfather's possessions, including a journal he kept during the time he fought in the Spanish Civil War. Steve traces his grandfather's footsteps through Spain, and with Laia's help, he visits the battlefields and ruined towns, and begins to understand the power of history and the transformative nature of passion for a righteous cause.
