Houghton Forster has always wanted more: from his time as a young boy in Mississippi, working twelve-hour days; to the moment he first laid eyes on his future wife, Annabelle Teague; 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.

Now the heads of a preeminent American family, Houghton and Annabelle raise their four children with the expectation they’ll one day become world leaders. But the burden of greatness weighs heavily on each generation, forcing Houghton to seriously consider who should control the company after he’s gone.

An irresistible tour de force of original storytelling, American Pop blends fact and fiction to capture how families are always rising and falling in America, and to explore the many ways in which nostalgia can manipulate cultural memory—and the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.