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

Genre: Non-Fiction, Autobiography

This is the true story of Mitch Albom, author of Tuesdays with Morrie, sports writer and philanthropist, and his wife Janine. The two headed to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake devastated the country to help out in The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage. There they met three year old Chika. Chika was a feisty little girl with clear opinions and a vivacious personality. She had been turned into the orphanage by her Godmother who had taken her in after Chika's mother died giving birth to her baby brother. After being at the orphanage for a while, Chika began to show odd signs like a gait in her walk and the drooping of one side of her face. Chika had a rare form of brain cancer. Albom and his wife took Chika into their home in Detroit, Michigan and so began the journey of looking for a miracle cure for Chika's illness. That miracle never came. But what did come, were life lessons and precious memories. This is a story about the making of a family, and just like all stories of love, when loss comes, it is a heartbreaking.

What a beautifully written tribute to a little girl who changed Albom's life. If you are a fan of audio books, definitely give this one a try. It is read by Albom himself and you really feel his emotions as he's reading the story. But, my favorite parts were the audio playbacks of Chika that came up every so often. I've been thinking about this quite a bit since I finished this book. We've gone from a culture of the written word, to audio (think radio shows as entertainment) and now visual. While I, of course, appreciate the written word and visuals, there's something about audio that's unexplored and, I think, gone missing. In the book, Albom writes about the prayer services that the kids lead at the orphanage and its exuberant excitement. And then he plays a short recording of this service. To say that it was exuberant is an understatement. When you hear their voices singing and the drums playing, you can feel the palpable joy in their voices. It was powerful and so fun to hear. As you can imagine, this one was an emotional read, and is true to the expression that, "It is better to have loved and lost, then to never have loved at all."