An epic novel that reveals the depravity and violence that marked the California gold rush and so shatters the mythology of the Golden State. The Frenchman's Gold is based on a little-known historical event: the wave of defeated French revolutionaries who swept over the California shore in 1849. It traces the fabulous and sometimes nightmarish adventures of Ninette, a beautiful painter's model whose bad luck put her on the wrong side of the barricades, and Antonin, a rebellious Parisian worker. Of the two companions of misfortune, surprisingly, Ninette will be the one with the better survival skills and the support for Antonin.