The only book title I can think of is "Follow the River" but it is about a pioneer woman captured by Native Americans who eventually escapes and follows the Ohio River to the colonies. I think it was supposed to be a true story.

I was thinking an early Dean Koontz, until you got to the part where you say "The pilot along with his new girlfriend joint the army . . ", so its probably not, though it wouldn't hurt to check some of his early stuff out.

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

This lack of a title will slowly drive me nuts *g*... FWIW, here's the plot as I remember it: --------------MAJOR SPOILERS! --------- `` `` `` `` `` `` `` Heroine somehow winds up with Raven King (I don't remember her falling asleep, but I do vaguely recall she was against the idea initially). Raven King seduces her, they fall in love, and go off to live in a huge black stone castle, I think, in Wales. Raven King has an unhinged and dangerously jealous brother who does something nasty to him and the Heroine, I can't recall just what, but she eventually forgives him (stupid move on her part). When she finds out she's pregnant, and while Raven King is off doing something or other, she goes to the rotten brother to make a peace offering and try to bring the brothers back together. Evil brother promptly sells her into slavery and tells the RK she's dead or run off. She's sold to a noble family far away consisting of an older father and a horrible son who has two wife/concubines but he's annoyed that he's not fathered any children with them. As Heroine is very pregnant by the time she arrives here, he decides she'll be his, because obviously she can breed. She in turn questions the ill-treated wife/concubines and learns the horrible son had mumps as a teenager. Because of her knowledge of medicine, she tells him he's sterile, which angers him further. Older dad steps in and decides Heroine should belong to him instead. Son nurses deep rage. She has her baby (the Raven King's son) and she and the older man slowly come to care for each other. Heroine becomes the healer in the castle. She eventually bears a daughter for her new husband. In the meantime, the RK finally figures out she might still be alive and poses as a troubadour to get into the nobleman's castle. This part is hazy at best, but I think he tricks the two men into fighting and something happens to the father. The Heroine is then forced by the nasty son to be the castle whore and is offered to the troubadour (the RK is disguised as a really yucky guy). Lucky for her, it's her own true love, and everything works out. I believe she becomes pregnant again, but they are separated again. Somehow they escape and make it back separately to the RK's castle, but while he's turned into a raven one of his own men accidentally shoots him down and he dies. She's left with three children and his castle and I really don't remember what happens to the evil brother. Finally, in the last chapter, fast forward 500 years or so to two sedate, proper, Regency-era lovers who are taking a sedate and proper walking tour and come across the ruins of the RK's castle. The reincarnated Heroine somehow knows how to climb the barely discernible stairs hewn in the rock and talks about which rooms were where in the castle. The Hero (whose name, for who knows what reason I clearly remember as being Tom -- would that the author and title had made the same...