My husband and I were returning from a cousin’s wedding, traveling on Nebraska Highway 27 between Ellsworth and Gordon. The road extended mile after mile over the shaggy, grass-covered dunes of the Nebraska Sandhills. No cars – only wind, sand and sky, with the occasional sign pointing to a ranch headquarters miles off the highway.

I spotted a weathered gray board propped against a fence post: Mari Sandoz Museum.

As a girl in the Sandhills, reading Old Jules in my two-room country school, I marveled at the fact that Mari Sandoz grew up on a homestead at the edge of the Sandhills and became a celebrated author and historian of the American West.

“That’s odd,” I said to my husband.

I expected a museum in Gordon or Chadron. Her work is honored at the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center in Chadron, but in the late 1990s, a museum also stood here, on this ranch.

We turned up a sandy gravel road toward a ranch house. It was a hot, windy July day, and not a soul was about. We sat in the car for a while before walking to the front door and knocking. We were nearly ready to give up when she opened the door after a long moment.

I said hello and told her we were interested in seeing the Mari Sandoz Museum.

She smiled and said, “I’m Caroline, Mari’s sister,” and that she’d be happy to show us around.

I introduced myself and explained my interest. When I said my family name, she looked at me over her glasses. “I share miles of fence line with the Vintons,” she said. “I know all about them.”

My own family had ranched about 100 miles to the southwest, in the central Sandhills. We quickly fall into easy conversation, and I note Caroline’s piercing yet personal way of seeing people and place.

Talking about the Kinkaid Act, which expanded homestead acreage in western Nebraska, she said, “People couldn’t even figure out how to starve on 160 acres, but they figured it out just fine with 640.”

Caroline kept files of Sandhills newspaper clippings in gunmetal-gray cabinets lining her dining room, many organized by family name. With a triumphant flourish, she pulled a Vinton file. Inside were my graduation and wedding announcements from the Grant County News.

Before we left, she showed us a basement display of Mari’s belongings, and I was surprised at how small and fashionable Mari’s clothes were. Caroline affirmed Mari’s fashion sense, drily observing, “she was particular about the fit.”

Finally, I asked why Mari would write a book about their father, Old Jules, who could be brutal to his wife and children. Caroline looked at me over the top of her glasses. “It was the best story that Mari knew,” she said.

Caroline knew many stories – even some of mine. I had left the Sandhills long ago, untethered – or so I thought – from this place of grass and sky. She had been keeping track of me, and of many others.

Caroline died in 2012 in a Gordon nursing home. Her obituary notes that she moved to town only when her health required it.

The collections she so carefully curated live on at the Mari Sandoz High Plains Heritage Center in Chadron, where they form part of the permanent collection.