This is the second book in the Red Valley series but it's not a sequel and can be read indpendently. The first book is "Saving Grace".

Disowned by his family and trapped into a loveless marriage Levi Matthews thinks his life is over. The one bright spot is his beautiful daughter. Then his wife dies under mysterious circumstances freeing him, or so he thought. Now he's a single father raising a daughter that needs a mother. Deciding that he wants a marriage in name only he places an ad for a mail order bride. Hope Saunders is from a well to do family in Savannah Georgia that has fallen on hard times due to her father's gambling. She learns that she is to be married off to pay for her father's debts. Her fiance is a cold heartless man that has already buried two healthy wives. Hope decides to take control of her own fate and answers an ad for a mail order bride. But is she making the right decision? She knows nothing of the man placing the ad except that he is a widower with a little girl and he lives out west. At least she was making her own decisions and being a romantic at heart she could only hope that she would find love with this stranger. At least she would already have a daughter to love. That was more than she had or could hope to have if she stayed in Savannah.