“Finding Chika” by Mitch Albom. New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2019. 241 pages, $24.99 (hardcover).

In his most recent nonfiction memoir, “Finding Chika,” Mitch Albom movingly describes the feeling all parents and guardians have for their daughters and sons who are sick and fighting for life against an incurable disease. This poignant memoir is about Albom’s relationship with Chika Jeune, who was born three days before the 2010 earthquake that devastated Haiti.

It is not a spoiler to tell you that Chika dies because on the very first page, Albom writes, “Chika died last spring when the trees in our yard were beginning to bud. Her absence left us without breath or sleep or appetite, and my wife and I stared straight ahead for long stretches until someone spoke to snap us out of it. Then one morning, Chika reappeared.”

Chika is a young Haitian girl, abandoned to an orphanage by her father after her mother died giving birth to Chika’s younger brother. Albom met her during one of his monthly visits to the orphanage he supports. The orphanage director tells him that she has an illness that is not treatable in Haiti, so he takes her back to Detroit, where he lives, for a diagnosis. After several doctor visits, MRIs and tests, Chika is diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma at age 5.

DIPG is an aggressive tumor that grows on the brain and is extremely difficult to treat. It usually strikes children between 5 and 9 years old and quickly debilitates them. Currently, there is no effective treatment and zero chance of survival. Only 10 percent of children diagnosed with DIPG live two years after diagnosis, and less than 1 percent live for five years.

Albom writes about the parenting experiences he, Janine and Chika enjoyed during her all-too-brief stay with them. He says, “it was hard and crushing and loving and exhalating, which is what having a precious but sick child is like.”

The story is a dialog between Albom and Chika, who has died and comes back to visit him in his imagination. The book has four chapters with subchapters labeled separately as You, Me and Us. There are chapters about Chika’s infancy in poverty, her mother’s death, Chika’s admission to Have Faith Haiti Orphanage, Chika’s diagnosis of DIPG, Albom taking her to Detroit hoping that American medical care could find a cure, Chika becoming a permanent part of the Albom family, a two-year worldwide search for medical solutions, word that a treatment does not exist yet and how the final year of her life was lived.

“Finding Chika” is beautifully written from the standpoint of de facto parents. Albom and Janine fell in love with Chika and made her their own. Chika lived for seven years after her diagnosis, which is a miracle.

Don’t borrow this book. Buy it because all author profits from this book go to the Have Faith Haiti Orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

Albom is a best-selling author, screenwriter, playwright and nationally syndicated columnist. His books have collectively sold more than 40 million copies in 47 languages worldwide. Although “Tuesdays with Morrie” spent four straight years on the New York Times best-seller list and is the best-selling memoir of all time, I found “The Five People You Meet in Heaven” the most life-affecting.

“Finding Chika” is one of the most fascinating of Albom’s books because on each page Albom gifts the reader with heartwarming words from Chika and emotional reactions from Mitch, Janine and her supportive family of newfound friends.

Albom has founded nine charities in his hometown of Detroit, and since 2010 has operated the Have Faith Haiti Orphanage in Port-au-Prince.

In just 235 pages, Albom took me on a memorable journey from just wanting to read a book for entertainment to a point where I appreciate my son more now than at any time in the past. How precious is the time we spend with loved ones? When we put work or chores aside to sit with and talk to our kids, we take from life that which life is meant to give.

“Finding Chika” is another beautiful, magnificent, marvelous book by Albom. I’ve read all of Albom’s books. It is difficult to say which one I liked the most because each one pulls a different heartstring. “Finding Chika” tows at the parental heartstring that runs through biological parents, stepparents, foster parents, grand- and great-grandparents.

Read this book and enjoy the ups and downs of an emotional courageousness faced and conquered by Mitch and Janine. You will be affected forever.

– Reviewed by Harold Little, Western Kentucky University Accounting Department.