China Rose McCool WAS California! Her story is one of family, love, prejudice, treachery and ultimately, triumph. A compelling family saga!El Dorado! Gold Is Discovered In California. China Rose McCool saw the lawlessness, violence and prejudice of the California Mother Lode gold camps through the eyes of a child. But, orphaned at 17, the beautiful, strong-willed China realized that the real gold lay in the land and the courageous men and women who stayed on when the gold camps were merely a whisper from the past. China would spend her life working to shape the new state of California into the Golden State it would become in Rose Of Sonora.