FIRST STEP UP TOWARD HEAVEN (293 pp.)Adela Rogers St. JohnsPrentice 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...