AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

"Mr. Wright's imagined history of the rise and fall of the sugary drink empire is so robust and recognizable that you might feel nostalgic for the taste of a soda you've never had." - Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK BY Parade - Cosmopolitan - Town & Country - AARP - InStyle - Garden & Gun - Vol. 1 Brooklyn

The story of a family.
The story of an empire.
The story of a nation.

Moving from Mississippi to Paris to New York and back again, a saga of family, ambition, passion, and tragedy that brings to life one unforgettable Southern dynasty--the Forsters, founders of the world's first major soft-drink company--against the backdrop of more than a century of American cultural history.

The child of immigrants, Houghton Forster has always wanted more--from his time as a young boy in Mississippi, working twelve-hour days at his father's drugstore; to the moment he first laid eyes on his future wife, Annabelle Teague, a true Southern belle of aristocratic lineage; to his invention of the delicious fizzy drink that would transform him from tiller boy into the founder of an empire, the Panola Cola Company, and entice a youthful, enterprising nation entering a hopeful new age.

Now the heads of a preeminent American family spoken about in the same breath as the Hearsts and the Rockefellers, Houghton and Annabelle raise their four children with the expectation they'll one day become world leaders. The burden of greatness falls early on eldest son Montgomery, a handsome and successful politician who has never recovered from the horrors and heartbreak of the Great War. His younger siblings Ramsey and Lance, known as the "infernal twins," are rivals not only in wit and beauty, but in their utter carelessness with the