SHORT TAKES : Plains Attract Eva Marie Saint

RED CLOUD, Neb. — Eva Marie Saint says she has no plans to portray a Willa Cather character soon, but that touring the countryside so lovingly portrayed by the author “whets your appetite to read everything she wrote.”

Saint and her husband, director Jeffrey Hayden, climbed aboard a school bus Saturday as part of a caravan that rumbled up and down muddy country roads to retrace scenes from “O Pioneers!” and other Cather works.

The tour was part of the 35th annual spring conference on the works of Nebraska’s Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Cather moved to Red Cloud in 1883 when she was 9 and lived here until she was a young woman. The community of 1,300 people is about 180 miles southwest of Omaha.