Two Nails, One Love

By: Alden M. Hayashi

Narrated by: Francois Chau

Two Nails, One Love opens in New York City with the narrator - Ethan Taniguchi, a Japanese American gay man in his early 40s - 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 in a internment camp in Arkansas in World War II, followed by a deportation to Japan, where she witnesses the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Ethan's past is also revealed - painful memories of a forsaken career in music and a delayed coming out at the height of the AIDS epidemic. Eventually, both mother and son come to understand the complex and subtle ways that their lives are intertwined, with the past reverberating powerfully through the present.

©2021 Black Rose Writing (P)2021 Black Rose Writing

A little bit of Hawaiian history

This book has also been turned into a play. A story covers the difficulties of living. And two different worlds that only being a Japanese American, but also being gay and all the difficulties surrounding. Both.

Story deserves better read

No inflection and poor sound quality. I had to concentrate very hard to stay with the reader.