He came to save a broken congregation. She was the one thing his own church told him not to touch.

When Reverend Gabriel Sett arrives in the raised town of New Copper, Kentucky, to shepherd his relocated flock into an uncertain new beginning, the last person he expects to need is Delia Crane — the woman his own congregation has already tried and condemned for a shame nobody can quite explain. She's living in the church annex with nowhere else to go. She can read a roofline better than he can read his own sermon notes. And falling for her is about to cost him everything his family name has ever quietly purchased.

Because buried inside the church's own founding paperwork is a fraud four decades old: a fortune built on a dying man's stolen land, a murder dressed up as an accident, and a witness signature that belongs to Gabriel's own grandfather. Delia has carried the other half of that secret her whole life — an inherited shame she was never allowed to fully understand, passed down like a debt nobody would name. Now, with a coal company's endowment hanging in the balance and his congregation's trust on the line, Gabriel must decide what a good name is actually worth, and whether a love built on honesty can survive what honesty is about to cost them both.

Set against the raw, unhealed backdrop of a relocated Appalachian coal town rebuilding itself under company money it can't quite trust, THE PREACHER'S FORBIDDEN BRIDE is a sweeping Southern historical romance of scandal, faith, and redemption — for readers who love the emotional pull of Kristin Hannah and the small-town faith and secrets of Francine Rivers. It's the fifth novel in the Women of Copper Hollow series, and reads perfectly as a standalone.

If you love clean historical romance, forbidden love stories, and Christian fiction with real stakes and an ending that earns its hope — start reading THE PREACHER'S FORBIDDEN BRIDE today.