When a speaker at a packed New York Comic Con event mentioned that Samantha Parkington, an American Girl doll, has not one but two romantic prospects in a new novel for adults, the crowd went wild. “Go Samantha!” someone yelled from the back of the room.
It was as if the hundred or so attendees, several of whom were dressed as Samantha in gingham dresses and hair ribbons, had learned that an old friend lived happily ever after.
The reality — or the fiction — is more nuanced. As Fiona Davis, author of “Samantha: The Next Chapter,” which came out from American Girl Publishing on Oct. 13, told the audience, “The last thing we want to read about is a happy family that gets happier, right? That’s not fun.”
The crowd vociferously agreed. They represented just a fraction of the enthusiasts who have made American Girl a phenomenon — akin to Build-a-Bear or Lego — over the past 40 years.
Readers last encountered Samantha in a series of books for children, orphaned and growing up with her wealthy grandmother in the fictional town of Mount Bedford, N.Y. In the first American Girl novel for grown-ups, she’s a 25-year-old suffragist, struggling to reclaim her inheritance while making ends meet as a shopgirl at B. Altman & Company.
Yes, there’s romance, albeit of the chaste variety — this is American Girl after all, specializing in plucky wholesomeness and owned by Mattel. (Barbie, star of a slightly edgier franchise, also had a new book this year.)
“For Samantha,” Davis said, “it’s about balancing joys and dealing with death and living in New York City in the 1920s when everything was on the cusp of breaking free. Fashions were changing; so were women’s roles in the public. She gets caught up in that wave of change.”
Davis, a best-selling author of historical fiction, was skeptical when she received an email in January 2025 from Janelle Asselin, an editor at American Girl, inviting her to discuss a top secret project.
At 59, Davis is outside the company’s original demographic, which tends to be millennial and obsessively devoted to the historical dolls and their back stories, laid out in books written by a team of Mattel staff and authors for hire.
But thanks to three nieces, Davis was aware of the American Girl phenomenon — the red shopping bags, the pored-over catalog, the much anticipated Girl of the Year — and she was intrigued by the book idea.
When working on novels like “The Lions of Fifth Avenue” (about the New York Public Library) and “The Stolen Queen” (centered around the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Davis conducts her own research. This time, she had the help of Katherine Cartwright, 35, a senior historical researcher for American Girl, which keeps exhaustive files for each of its characters, indexed by theme.
Davis also had a beloved body of work to build upon, with few parameters aside from Samantha’s age and the decade in which she’d appear.
Davis knew the experts would be watching — not just Cartwright and Asselin, both of whom grew up playing with American Girl dolls, but legions of fans invested in Samantha’s fate.
Monica Isabella Molina, who is in her early 30s, sat in the front row at Comic Con wearing Samantha’s signature checkered dress. She explained how, when her family emigrated from Cuba to Miami, they learned about American culture from American Girl books, including ones about Samantha.
“As someone whose family came from a communist country, that Samantha’s aunt fought for the right of women to vote and brought her to rallies was very personal,” Molina said.
Satele Walleser, 27, also wore a gingham dress and held her Samantha doll like a trophy.
“She was my birthday present when I was 9 years old,” Walleser said. “She made me feel confident and seen. I’m excited to step into her world again.”
The day after their panel discussion, I met Davis and Cartwright for tea at American Girl Place in Rockefeller Center. The 40,000-square-foot store was abuzz with young people supervising their dolls’ coiffures at the hair salon; begging elders for everything from bag charms ($20) to toy bunk beds ($265); and paging through books while waiting in line at the cafe.
With a tower of cucumber sandwiches, pigs in blankets and cinnamon buns between us, Cartwright explained how, in the lead-up to the 40th anniversary of the founding of American Girl, the company pondered adult novels for the first few dolls in the historical line. There was Kirsten Larson, who hails from the mid-1800s; and Molly McIntyre, born a century later.
But Samantha had a progressive aunt and a Victorian-era grandmother; hers “was an intergenerational story, so she just felt natural,” Cartwright said.
Samantha also happens to be a great-great-grandmother of Raquel Reyes, the 2026 Girl of the Year, who stumbles upon Samantha’s diary when she’s at a family celebration in Mount Bedford.
“Samantha inspires Raquel to stand up for those around her and be a good friend,” Cartwright said. “Millennial women can recognize a familiar character and tell the young girls in their lives, ‘Hey, I grew up with Samantha, you might like Raquel.’”
There are several parallels between Samantha’s time and the one we’re in now, according to Cartwright: “The cultural atmosphere, the culture wars. There was a tension in the 1920s about how to teach children and what they should learn about history.”
“And there were book bans,” Davis added.
“It’s eerie,” Cartwright said, taking a sip of tea, “but I think all of the past has a lot of lessons to learn from.” As for how American Girl deals with politics and other hot-button topics, the approach is, “Be honest with the history. Capture the time period. Readers make the connection.”
“One hopes,” Davis said.
For “Samantha,” Cartwright tracked down information about department stores, boardinghouses and the self-defense classes that were popular for women at the time. Davis wove it all into her story.
“Even as I was writing the scenes, I could hear Samantha in my head saying, ‘No I wouldn’t say that,’” Davis joked. “She was over my shoulder all the time, really bossy. I respect that. Samantha was a leader in a time when women were not supposed to be.”
American Girl tends to present a can-do, empowering vibe — “In every era, character counts,” reads a sign above a case of dolls — and “Samantha: The Next Chapter” is no exception.
But Davis breathes genuine chutzpah into the character. She’s not just a grown-up doll; she’s a woman with a spine, standing up to unsavory characters and fighting for what’s hers. Readers who know nothing of the Parkington clan will easily find their bearings; they might even learn a little something about Prohibition-era crime in Manhattan.
The hardest part of the project, Davis said, was keeping it a secret.
“I was basically unavailable and aloof,” she said, describing how she juggled the writing of “Samantha” with the editing of her next book, “The Jewel of Sugar Hill,” which comes out from Dutton in January.
On the subject of future American Girl books for adults, Davis and Cartwright were smilingly elliptical. In other words, very on-brand.
“We hope that there is more to come,” Cartwright said.
“We’re looking forward to an interesting year ahead,” Davis said.
So far, she added, “The energy of the readers really blows me away.”
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