Kirkus Reviews calls it, "a bold refusal to submit to a stereotype" and the Los Angeles Times says the book "offers highly readable prose, reliable research and an unflinching indictment of the dominant narrative of American rurality."

Catte writes compact non-fiction about history, memory, and place. Her books have received praise from the likes of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New Republic, and Boston Review. Pure America made the 2022 PEN America Literary Awards longlist for PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, and was named Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2021.

Catte lives in Virginia and also runs Passel, an applied history firm, with her partner Josh. They do award-winning consulting work using history to solve real-world problems in Appalachia and the Mid-Atlantic.

Her essays and commentary have appeared in the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Nation, on NPR, and in many other places. She is a member of the National Writers Union, the Authors Guild, and a board member of the Appalachian African-American Cultural Center in Pennington Gap, Virginia. Catte holds a PhD in public history.