I have a User table and an Address table. One User should only have one Address. So, ideally, User table should contain an FK column for Address and many-to-one will get me the correct object relationships.

However, the tables are not done this way. Rather, a separate table User_Address was created. What kind of mapping can get me the relationship of one User containing one Address? Changing the table is not an option.

Hibernate has a one-to-one mapping you can define. You can define from your User table to the Address table. Have you tried that?

The trouble I'm having is how to get the link table into the picture for either many-to-one or one-to-one.

Can you post the tables and columns? it's not clear to me what they are.

It sounds like you have three tables: User > User_Address > Address

So you have a join table even though there only ever one address per user.

I think you're stuck having to create three java beans, one for each table and using either the one-to-one mapping or one-to-many.

Have you read the reference doc?

http://www.hibernate.org/hib_docs/v3/reference/en/html/associations.html#assoc-unidirectional-join

I did the In Action book and did some google search, but should really have RTDM.

Thanks.