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

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.