Books: Disneyland of Death

FIRST STEP UP TOWARD HEAVEN (293 pp.)—Adela Rogers St. Johns—Prentice Hall ($4.95).'

Nestled among the warm brown hills of the San Fernando Valley, hardly a bone's throw from some of the wealthiest Los Angeles suburbs, lies a brilliant green oasis of more than 300 acres, which at first glance seems to be a golf course. On closer examination, the oasis turns out to be none other than Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, the Versailles of cemeteries that Novelist Evelyn Waugh (The Loved One) celebrated as the supreme expression of the American Way of Death.

Forest Lawn is...