For author Sheryl Cornett’s first novel, “No Secrets in This House,” she sets her characters in a place familiar to her: Ocracoke Island, part of North Carolina’s coastal Outer Banks region. Though not a native to the island, Cornett says she feels most at home there.
She refers to herself as a “dual citizen” of Sunset, Louisiana, and Hillsborough, North Carolina. She lives in Sunset roughly half of the year.
” That’s a thing I get a lot: Why did you write about Ocracoke? You’re not from there. You’re an outsider,” she said. “That’s how they are, small towns. I feel that way about Lafayette in some ways — that I’ll always be an outsider here. That’s not a bad thing. People are very gracious.”
Cornett, who taught English and Creative Writing at North Carolina State University for several years, started working on “No Secrets in This House” in 2016…