Finding Chika, Mitch Albom
Finding Chika, Mitch Albom
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Finding Chika
A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family

Bestseller

Author: Mitch Albom

Narrator: Mitch Albom

Unabridged: 4 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 11/05/2019


Synopsis

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.

About Mitch Albom

Mitch Albom is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold forty-two million copies in forty-eight languages worldwide. He has written eight number-one New York Times bestsellers—including Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time—award-winning television films, stage plays, screenplays, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. Through his work at the Detroit Free Press, he was inducted into both the National Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports halls of fame and is the recipient of the 2010 Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement. He founded the nonprofit SAY Detroit, which provides pathways to success for Detroiters in need through major health, housing and education initiatives. He also founded a dessert shop and a gourmet popcorn line to help fund it. Albom operates Have Faith Haiti, a home and school for impoverished children and orphans in Port-au-Prince, which he visits monthly. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Reading_ on January 27, 2024

"You can hide from people you like." Why would you do that? "So they can find you." This book broke my heart and my tear glands. This is a story about adoption, battling cancer, death and grief. But this is also a book about goodness, hope, humanity, life lessons and found families. Reading this book was......more

Goodreads review by Kloe on March 06, 2025

Mitch Albom is going to have a new book and no one here except me on goodreads is hyped for it ??! Update: BYE IM IN SHAMBLES......more

Goodreads review by Provin on May 20, 2021

Oh Chika -you have my heart! Through sniffles (and full on bawling) I made the commitment to find out who Chika was and what her journey entailed. Mitch Albom exquisitely tells his story of finding Chika in Haiti at the orphanage he (and purchasers of this book) supports. From finding out she was si......more

Goodreads review by Jean on April 17, 2021

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Mitch Albom’s book “Tuesday with Morrie.” So, when I saw Albom’s book “Find Chika”, I decided to give it a try. The book is well written and is a heartbreaking story of a young Haitian girl that ended up in a Haitian orphanage run by Albom after the earthquake. Albom doe......more

Goodreads review by Aj the Ravenous Reader on September 29, 2024

There was a time when I thought Mitch Albom was losing his magic touch because it seemed like after reading Tuesdays with Morrie, every single book he released next seemed to pale in comparison until Finding Chika and I’m so glad I decided to pick this up. I doubt it's easy to write about your own ph......more