Introduced in 1986, American Girl Samantha Parkington captured little girls’ hearts with her story of a wealthy orphan whose life with her beloved grandmother exposes her to the power of privilege, the inequality of class divides, and the start of the women’s suffrage movement. Just as the girls who first fell in love with Samantha have grown, so too has our favorite American Girl. Now, in SAMANTHA: THE NEXT CHAPTER, bestselling historical fiction author Fiona Davis brings Samantha into a new era.

When readers met Samantha, she was a recently orphaned nine-year-old who had just moved to her wealthy grandmother’s home in New Bedford, Massachusetts. From the start, her proper but indulgent grandmother always supported and honored her interests --- from befriending a servant girl, to starting a tutoring business, and eventually getting involved in the suffrage movement. Now the year is 1920, and 25-year-old Samantha is a proud suffragist and teacher who has just taken leave from her rigid teaching job in upstate New York to spend the summer with Grandmary, whose age has begun to show. 

The rest of the family --- Aunt Cordelia and Uncle Gard, as well as Cordelia’s sisters, Agnes and Agatha --- all introduced in earlier works, remain close. But ambitious careers and travel plans have kept them geographically separate, making this summer a very important one for Samantha, who longs for the bright, cheery bonds of her youth. She has found something akin to family in the suffrage movement. She devotes her time not just to spreading the word, but to teaching women about the voting process, the kinds of rights they will vote on, and why their fight is so important to society as a whole.

"Reading the book, it is easy to see why this author/character pairing makes so much sense.... As real, inspiring and magical as the doll you once held in your hands and whispered your dreams to, SAMANTHA: THE NEXT CHAPTER is proof of the power of fiction, imagination and knowledge."

On the day we reunite with Samantha, she has just given a spectacular talk to the League of Women Voters, reminding them of the importance of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which at this point requires only one more state to pass. Too many women, she declares, have given up after securing only their state’s approval. But with only 35 of 50 states passing the amendment, that leaves many unrepresented women, especially those of color. Though the gathering is a rousing success, trouble awaits Samantha.

As the summer passes, Grandmary begins to exhibit concerning signs of confusion and forgetfulness. One day, when Samantha is called on an urgent bank errand, she comes home to find Grandmary, once stately and commanding, rummaging through her library shrieking about papers. She addresses Samantha not by her name, but by her mother’s. Samantha agrees to allow Grandmary to avoid the doctor; proper to a fault, Grandmary is ashamed of her decline. But this compromise proves devastating when she passes peacefully in her sleep after days of confusion and wandering spells. It leaves Samantha utterly crushed and alone.

But her grief is to be the least of her worries. As Samantha prepares to settle Grandmary’s affairs, she learns of a second will that supersedes the original one bequeathing Grandmary’s estate to Samantha and Gard. This new will leaves everything to a mysterious business entity bearing Grandmary’s initials. It was signed by a New York lawyer only days before her death --- an impossibility given her condition at the time. Suddenly it occurs to Samantha that the bank emergency that sent Grandmary into a frantic tailspin was no emergency at all, but an elaborate ruse to steal her estate, obviously by someone who knew about her vulnerable state and was willing to make things personal. 

With the family home locked up as the estate enters probate, Samantha sets her sights on New York, where Eugene Crouch, the lawyer who fraudulently prepared this bogus will, has a practice. After all, Samantha is an educated, charming young woman who has long fought against injustice. How hard can it be to right such an obvious wrong? 

As it turns out, very hard. Upon arriving in New York, Samantha’s lodging plans are dashed, and she is forced to crash with Agatha, now a budding actress living in a boarding house and moonlighting as a shopgirl at B. Altman. Samantha then learns that Crouch is not just any lawyer. He is the personal attorney of Leonard Malloy, a cutthroat shipping company owner who is rumored to dabble in alcohol-filled gambling dens, a crime in Prohibition-era 1920. But Samantha is nothing if not determined. Now that she has a name, she feels certain that she can pin the crime on Crouch and Malloy and regain the estate --- not for her own benefit, but to continue the good model her grandmother set forth of charity and advocacy. 

With her noble cause in mind, Samantha takes a job in the undergarments department of B. Altman. She builds a friendship with one of Malloy’s underlings, Tommy, a bright but down-on-his-luck young man who was once saved by Malloy and now harbors an unyielding loyalty to him. But more than being a means to an end, Tommy is charming, sweet and, let’s face it, devilishly handsome. It is not long before Samantha realizes that she may have entwined herself too thoroughly in Malloy’s criminal operations. At the same time, she also reunites with an old family friend, Richard, who is working in the judicial system against Malloy himself. This puts her in the crosshairs of an active investigation, a love triangle, and the mystery that started it all: Why would Malloy target Grandmary of all people?

As the investigation takes shape, Samantha continues to ponder the injustices of her world --- the ways that child labor is exploited, women are subjugated to the roles of wife and mother, and Black women are killed just for exercising their rights as free women. It is in these scenes that Fiona Davis pens her greatest homage to the plucky little girl readers met decades ago. But it is in the deepening mystery that she pushes Samantha from American Girl to American Woman, a fully formed, wholly realized interpretation of the girl we all idolized. The blend of nostalgia and freshness is intoxicating, and Davis is careful to reference many stories readers already will be familiar with, while still aging Samantha up appropriately and sending her off on new adventures both dangerous and romantic. 

Reading the book, it is easy to see why this author/character pairing makes so much sense. Long praised as a writer of strong, indelible female characters living in times that were not ready for them, Davis feels almost like a medium drawing Samantha from another realm. As real, inspiring and magical as the doll you once held in your hands and whispered your dreams to, SAMANTHA: THE NEXT CHAPTER is proof of the power of fiction, imagination and knowledge. Educational, utterly charming and deeply nostalgic, it ushers in a new era not just of aged-up dolls, but of the American women who grew up inspired by them.