My Mountain Granny: The Story of Evelyn Howell Beck in the Mountain Town of Whittier, NC Shortly after moving to western North Carolina, Matthew Baker met Evelyn Howell Beck of Whittier, North Carolina. This meeting was the consequence of Baker’s lifelong desire to discover the “real Appalachia” and the character of the people who lived there. Over the course of a four-year period starting in 1998, Baker would visit Evelyn nearly twenty times. Their recorded conversations comprise the foundation of the book. Baker’s touching documentation of Beck’s life and the history of Whittier pays tribute to a once-booming mountain town and the resilience of its people.