“Mitch Albom has done it again with this moving memoir of love and loss. You can’t help but fall for Chika. A page-turner that will no doubt become a classic.” –Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club and The Art of MemoirFrom the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie comes Mitch Albom’s most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to … most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to be a family and the young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart.
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 forty-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.
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Well, I’ll just tell you what I shared with my friend when I emailed her and recommended the book to her. I said, “Do you have the Libby app? I do recommend listening to this book. It’s not the longest in the world, and it is really sad but it’s great to hear his voice and even hers, Chika’s, and his wife, and some of the things he mentions in the book that he actually got recorded in the moment. I mean, you know the feel of his books, somewhat sad, but so hopeful and all the things he learned and is sharing through his books.”
Oh, and I loved what he said about “what you carry.” If you want to know more about that, just Google Finding Chika quotes and you’ll find some that were going to be the ones I was going to write down in my Keepers book. It makes you want to just write to the author and tell him how proud of him you are, and how sorry, but yet…so happy for him too! He might just know what you are trying to say.
great read
Mitch Albom has done it again with this moving memoir of love and loss. You can’t help but fall for Chika. A page-turner that will no doubt become a classic.
How wonderful that there are people in this world like Mitch and Janine Albom. Yet, how sad that there are so many children in such need. They say things happen for a reason. I will never be convinced that a child getting cancer is a legitimate reason for anything. But, the fact that Chika’s life crossed paths with Mitch’s – surely THAT happened for a reason! What a beautiful and touching, if not heartbreaking, story of a special gift of love and perseverance by the Albom’s and courage and tenacity of a special little girl.
Mitch Albom’s story of Chika is inspiring, heartwarming and will stay with you always.
“A child is both an anchor and set of wings.”
What a wonderful ,heartfelt story of love, family and courage.
Mitch Albom has just the right with words that make you think, feel and continue on in the face of terror!
Chika may have had a short life, but it was so well lived and this…. is her story!
Excellent!
This book shows that whether we are parents or just custodians of children they leave their marks on us. The writing style is a flash-forward style that lets the reader see the weakness we all have for other humans. Death is a tragic experience when it takes a young child. The writing style is clear and easy to read just like his other books. This time we again see more of the writer’s emotions just like we did with Morrie.
It was a book that I did not readily read when it was published but so glad that I have read it now. It is truly heart-wrenching – a family by name only that does all it can to make a little girl well but can do nothing after all of the medical field fails. What a wonderful relationship they develop – even to the end. I highly recommend this book.
Even though I knew how the books ends, I was compelled to keep reading every word just to stay in the company of this delightful and inspiring child. Albom is an expert at seeing the what is special in people and putting it into words.
This book was incredible. I could not put it down. Mitch Albom is a writer that gets right to your heart. He draws you in and you feel like you’re sitting next to him. He draws you in to his story like you are right there. I would recommend this book to anyone who has a heart. He tells a story like no one else. The best book I’ve read in a long, long time.
This is a story of such heart-wrenching beauty that you think it would take a Mitch Albom to compose it. But Albom is more than the author, for it was his own heart that was broken open by the surprising arrival and excruciating departure of a dazzling little Haitian girl named Chika — who became, in every way that matters, his and his wife’s precious daughter — and it is his own life he seeks to patch back together in the telling.