Please forgive me if I am treading on ground already covered. The great novelist Oscar Hijuelos died this past Saturday of a heart attack in New York City. He was born in New York to Cuban immigrants, and is best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," the story of two Cuban musicians in post-WWII America. Even better, I believe, is "Mr. Ives' Christmas," a story of grief and redemption it would do everyone some good to peruse as we come upon the holidays and the first anniversary of the sad events at Newtown. He was the first person with Hispanic roots to win the fiction Pulitzer. He died much to soon.