ABSTRACT
The author was born in 1978 into a town grown from the kernel of a monastic settlement on the southern shore of Belfast Lough, literally a holy wood. The house of her early years was a brown brick bungalow, dashed in pebbles and lined in dark wood, garden distinguished by the papery elegance of a silver birch and a spiked quince bush that flowered in vivid red. The town was notable for its maypole, a rarity in Ireland. There its two main streets, Church and High, formed a cross. The author's experience of Northern Ireland is not of trauma. She is lucky. Conflict still imprinted itself, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. In 1998, as a student, the author rented a room in a house on the edge of Belfast’s Holy Lands, those streets united and defined by their biblical names, Carmel and Jerusalem and Palestine and Damascus.
