Finding Chika

Best-selling author Mitch Albom returns to nonfiction for the
first time in more than a decade in this poignant memoir that celebrates Chika,
a young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart. Performed by
Mitch Albom with Chika’s voice featured throughout.

Chika Jeune was born three days
before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her
infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving
birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage
that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. 

With no children of their own, the
40-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become
family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika’s arrival makes a quick impression.
Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids
and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a
doctor there says “no one in Haiti can help you with.” 

Mitch and Janine bring Chika to
Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her
homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their
lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure.
As Chika’s boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a
child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it
takes, can never be lost. 

Told in hindsight, and through
illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most
poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a
celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they
formed - a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family,
regardless of how it is made.