The Dragon Mother's Dream: A Year in La Jolla California Journal (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781925706123)

This is the story of a journey to Southern California, home of the American Dream, in search of fame and fortune.

An Australian couple of mixed German-Chinese origin with their six-year old son Maximilian leave their settled life in Sydney to move to California. The boy's Mandarin name is Xiaolong, meaning Little Dragon, and the dream of his mother is that he will one day become the number one golf player in the world. She has contacted Tiger Woods' first professional coach who is supposed to take the boy under his wings, and she is determined to make her dream come true.

The book follows Maximilian's exposure to playing junior gold, the highlights and pitfalls along with the emotional ups and downs of children involved in competitive sport, and their parents' sometimes conflicting and contradictory expectations, culminating in an account of Maximilian competing at the Junior World Championship in San Diego.

But The Dragon Mother's Dream is more than a book about golf. Part travelogue and part parenting memoir, it is a journal about living in one of the most privileged places in California. It documents the everyday realities and idiosyncracies of the contemporary American way of life, recorded with great precision and attention to detail by an Australian writer of European roots and - sometimes satirical, often ironic - sensibilities.

At the end of the book, the mother's dream takes an unexpected twist.