Sam from Max Minerva's thoughts:

For a music fan like myself, The Catchers was always going to strike a chord. Set in 1927 it follows "song-catcher" John McLoughlin sent to Appalachia to discover and record the local hill-music. When McLoughlin discovers black teenage guitarist, Moss Evans in a flooded Mississippi Delta he thinks he's found his next hit and decides to 'save' Evans. But not everyone sees him as a saviour.

Brooks’ clearly loves the folk and blues that soundtracks the plot, but it’s his eccentric characters and deft weaving of the political, historical and human that makes this story sing. A white writer, writing about cultural appropriation could have ended horribly off-key, instead this book hits all the right notes.

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‘Elegant and eloquent’ — Daily Mail 
‘The Catchers is a delight’ — The Guardian ‘
Hugely atmospheric’ — Independent 
‘An evocative musical road trip’ — Observer 
‘A spacious, sweeping novel’ —The Spectator

Spring 1927. The birth of popular music. John Coughlin is a song-catcher from New York who has been sent to Appalachia to source and record the local hill-country musicians.

His assignment leads him to small-town Tennessee where he oversees the recording session that will establish his reputation. From here he ventures further south in search of glory. He is chasing what song-catchers call the big fish or the firefly; the song or performer which will make a man rich.

Waylaid at an old plantation house, Coughlin gets wind of a black teenage guitarist, Moss Evans, who runs bootleg liquor in the Mississippi Delta. The Mississippi has flooded, putting the country underwater, but Coughlin is able to locate the boy and bring him out. Coughlin views himself as a saviour.

Others regard him as a thief and exploiter. Coughlin and Moss – the catcher and his catch – pick their way across a ruined, unstable Old South and then turn north through the mountains, heading for New York.