When Ten Trees Books of Natick made the move to its new retail location last year, bookworms and neighbors volunteered to help with the transition.

That the bookseller’s new digs were just across Main Street from the business’s birthplace presented somewhat of an obstacle, one that Ten Trees turned into an opportunity.

Its new retail space was too close to transport its bound editions by truck, too far to practically schlep those hundreds of pounds of paperbacks and hardcovers by hand.

As a solution, a book brigade was suggested.

Ten Trees devotees and customers had heard about the plan, and stood side by side last Oct. 19 for the big move. Volunteers passed stacks of books from one to the next, transmitting the volumes to the store’s new home.

To traverse Route 27, members of the brigade stood across the thoroughfare in small groups, where willing hands accepted those bundles of books and continued passing

them toward their destination.

“You just grab a handful of books and pass them on to the next guy,” said Kim Rickard. “We basically created a human chain.”

One member of that brigade was Samantha Sloane, who worked at Ten Trees.

“Kim was at one end and I was at the other,” said Sloane.

It’s a great chapter in the origin story of how she came to her current role in the town.

Sloane is the Bacon Free Library’s new Assistant Director and Head of Children’s Services.

The early roots of that narrative reach back years and across many miles to when Sloane’s father got her and her younger siblings involved and interested in the written word.

“My dad used to read stories to us. We would have hour-long discussions when I was a kid,” about plots, storylines, characters. One of Sloane’s main protagonists during that time was the series of Harry Potter books that cast a collective spell over the consciousness of readers worldwide.

“At the time, it was everything.”

Speaking of fiction, Sloane also lends her voice to the linguistically laborious task of narrating audio books. She narrates under an alias and has voiced several genres of fiction and non.

Fiction is preferable, she said, owing to the dynamic range in tone and affect required to voice that genre. It helps, too, that it’s her favorite category of literature.

Still just several weeks into her new position at the Bacon Free Library, Sloane said one of her goals is to bring more programming for kids to the institution. Currently in the works is a story time session hosted by the town’s fire chief.

“I’m still getting adjusted,” said Sloane.

She is a Wisconsin expat, who relocated here just prior to 2020.

She’d made the move to Massachusetts with her husband, so he could attend continuing education classes and pursue a degree here.

Then came the Covid era, and its crash course on how quickly and qualitatively the world can change.

Yet for all the chaos and confusion of those few pandemic years, some things remained constant.

The climate is comparable; Wisconsin and Massachusetts share muggy, hot summers.

The two also have winters in common, with our Bay State buried in snow a bit more, and the Badger State a little colder during their darkest months.

Sloane also found community in Natick.

Like that book brigade, unexpected connections are made from one person, one tribe to another. 

Sloane’s devotion to reading and books had drawn her to a job at Ten Trees, and a few serendipitous degrees of separation later to her role at the Bacon Free Library.

“I’ve always had a passion for reading,” said Sloane. “It was just happenstance of walking into a bookstore and asking.’’