Marie Mc Cartan shares the resilience of a community living in new book
Down Longfield is a vivid and nostalgic account of growing up near Forkhill village in the 1950s and 60s.
Under curfew on a patrolled border where smugglers outwit customs and a temporary classroom is across the street from the besieged RUC barracks, The Foresters' hall is a makeshift cinema, dole office, dancehall, youth club and theatre.
In teenage years transport to the dances in Dundalk is in cars bought for a fiver at the local scrapyard, held together with binder twine and the label from a Guinness bottle used as a tax disc.
Down Longfield is more than a historical record. It weaves a lively tapestry of family life in the last century, a special time and place filled with colourful tales and childhood escapades before the escalating conflict changed lives forever.