Finding Chika by Mitch Albom

Finding Chika by Mitch Albom

"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

Memoir

From

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 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.

Mitch Albom, a columnist for the Detroit Free Press, has been named America's No. 1 author. The Associated Press Sports Editors have named him No. 1 sports columnist eight times. Albom, a former professional musician, runs a daily radio show on Detroit's WJR and appears on ESPN's The Sports Reporters on a regular basis. He is the author of the national hits Bo and Fab Five, as well as four collections of his writings. He and his wife, Janine, live in Michigan.