Two Nails, One Love opens in New York City with the narrator-Ethan Taniguchi, a Japanese-American gay man in his early forties-awaiting the arrival of his mother from Hawaii. The two have been estranged for more than a decade, and the reunion is fraught with past grievances bubbling to the surface. After a fateful ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty, Ethan's mother reluctantly reveals details of her shattered childhood-her family's imprisonment...