Eureka!! I found the information! From an obit. in the Washington Post June 4, 2011 "Harry Bernstein, memoirist who wrote of childhood of deprivation, dies at 101 Harry Bernstein, who caused a literary sensation when he emerged from anonymity in his 90s to write two devastating memoirs that explored his childhood of squalor, abuse and anti-Semitism, died June 3 at his daughter's home in Brooklyn, N.Y. He was 101. The cause of death was not reported. "The Invisible Wall" drew favorable comparisons to Frank McCourt�s Pulitzer Prize-winning "Angela�s Ashes," about that author's hardscrabble upbringing in Ireland. Reviewing "The Invisible Wall" in the New York Times, William Grimes called it "a world of pain and prejudice, evoked in spare, restrained prose that brilliantly illuminates a time, a place and a family struggling valiantly to beat impossible odds." In "The Dream," Mr. Bernstein's follow-up memoir, he traced his family's move to Chicago in 1922. In reviews, critics described Mr. Bernstein as a storyteller of quiet, heartbreaking power. Author Juliet Wittman, writing in The Washington Post, said of "The Dream" that "beneath the poignant descriptions of places and times past, beneath the rising and falling patterns of these characters' lives, we hear at Wordsworth called "the still sad music of humanity." For much of his life, Mr. Bernstein's writing career was steady but unremarkable. He critiqued and summarized manuscripts for film studios in the 1930s and 1940s once giving thumbs down to Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" as "just another historical romance." Later, he edited trade magazines and continued to publish articles and short stories. In 1981, he wrote a novel, "The Smile," about a fashion model. It received little attention, although he joked that he knew it sold at least one copy because of a letter he received from a reader. When his memoirs were published, Mr. Bernstein faced some skepticism from critics who said he could not possibly recall entire conversations from his childhood. He insisted he did, as they had been seared into his brain with photographic clarity. As much as he tried to forget the past, Mr. Bernstein did not extinguish the burning hatred he said that he felt for his father, who made his mother's harsh life even worse. She died at 65 of malnutrition in an unheated tenement in the Bronx, N.Y. After her funeral, he never saw his father again. "He wept when she died. That's the only good thing I can say about him," Mr. Bernstein told USA Today. He dedicated "The Invisible Wall" to his mother, "who gave us so much and received so little. Can this book make up for it? Can anything?" � The Washington Post Company

dedtired - I agree with you on "meh" books and am working my way through one right now. It's by one of my favorite authors, so hate to give it up. I am hoping for a moment of blinding truth that will make it worthwhile. The saving grace is that it is well written, with good characters. As always, he does "get" his characters, and the device he is using in the storytelling is clever and well done. So there is value in the book.

Here's what the romance reader's board turned up: ": I can remeber this and I think this is the book you are looking for by Cathy Maxwell : WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE : Avon Books, 1998 - ISBN 0-380-79709-7 : Orphaned and virginal Eden is slated to become the latest "treasure" in a lasivious sultan's harem, when she escapes her prison ship during a violent storm. Washed ashore on the coast of England, she is greeted by jubilant townsfolk who asked the sea to send a bride for the handsome, unwed Earl of Penhollow. But can he find happiness with a beautiful maiden who has been taught to mistrust all men?"

I am becoming more and more convinced that I have read it, but I still can't remember when or who wrote it.