Uncomfortable secrets are tucked inside the thick, stone walls of the prestigious Ivy League school, Cross University. This is the story of Abigail O'Malley Trudeau, the smart, loving, and beautiful daughter of a working class WWII nurse and her fatally wounded wartime husband. From Boston to Baton Rouge to Cross, Vermont, Abby struggles to overcome her childhood traumas and grows up to be the love of one man, and the necessary wife of another. Rather than pursue her own dreams, Abby does what she believes she must and marries LSU star quarterback Zachary Trudeau, the youngest son of a well-healed Louisiana plantation family with too many secrets. When Zach is tapped to be the head football coach at historic Cross University, Abby finds herself alone and isolated. A dark web of lies begins to unravel and the under belly of university politics threatens to bring down the ivy-covered walls-taking Abby along with them, even as those who love her, try to save her. Cross of Ivy will take you on a riveting journey through a saga of two families over four generations with an intriguing peek behind ivy covered towers.

Author Biography

Roxana (Roxi) Bahar Hewertson is an expert in Organizational Effectiveness, Leadership Development, and Human Resource Management, with more than thirty-five years experience in the worlds of business, higher education, and non-profits. In Hewertson's second book, Lead Like it Matters...Because it Does, published in 2014 and her trademark leadership development program, Leading with Impact: Your Ripple Effect, she helps both emerging and seasoned leaders boost quantifiable job performance in mission-critical facets of business to achieve or exceed organizational and career goals. Roxi is the founder and CEO of Highland Consulting Group, Inc., (www.highlandconsultinggroupinc.com) and Ask Roxi, (www.askroxi.com). Hewertson is also the author of How to Build a Space Station: A Parable About Values at Work, and has been published in Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Inc., Strategy Driven, and Business News Daily, to name a few. She served as adjunct faculty at Cornell University s School of Industrial and Labor Relations and was the Director of Administration, Facilities and Finance at Cornell, where she championed a competitive Leadership Development Program with a waiting list of applicants for programs that are now led by her proteges university-wide. Before leaving Cornell to pursue her consulting and writing career full-time, she was responsible for a $250M non-academic operations budget and had oversight of nearly 2,000 professional, bargaining unit, and administrative staff."