Finding Chika

This is an incredibly touching book! Mitch Albom is the author of other excellent books, but Finding Chika has become my favorite. The story of how he and his wife brought a little Haitian child into their orphanage in Haiti, and then eventually when it was discovered she had brain cancer, into their own home, was hard to put down. As an author who has visited Haiti many times and played with children orphaned by the 2010 earthquake, I strongly empathized with this story of a suffering Haitian child. Albom’s prose is flawless, and his ability to draw in the… show more.

When Chika’s mother died, she was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Mitch Albom operates in Haiti. But at age 5, she was diagnosed with an incurable condition and brought by Mitch and his wife to Detroit for treatment. Looking back on Chika’s too-short life, and relaying conversations with her from both when she was living and after she passed, Mitch keeps Chika alive. Mitch’s ability to blend the real with the imagined is unique to his writing. This book will probably break you, but also help you transform your perspective about death into something far more hopeful.