BIG HAIR AND FLYING COWS

"Laughter and tears are said to cleanse the soul. I should have the cleanest in the South," muses Bertie Byrd, the plucky heroine of this slapstick, folksy novel. When Bertie, who works at her father's auto repair shop, isn't under a car, behind the wheel of her tow truck or reluctantly ferrying the nutty residents of Sweet Meadow, Ga., around town, she's surviving or recounting scrapes. She fends off the advances of her best friend Mary Lou's smarmy cousin, horrified by his not so funky moves on the dance floor at the Dew Drop Inn. She arrives home from the bar to discover her demented, elderly landlord, Pete Forney, naked in her recliner. (He becomes a repeat intruder.) She fumes over official notices forbidding her to park her wrecker in her driveway, only to discover a dead man has mysteriously issued the decree. Could her life get any wackier? Enter Jeff, her sexy but shady new boyfriend, a mill worker who also moonlights as a stripper. Soon, Bertie is also fending off a stalker, who sends threatening letters signed "Jack." But Bertie is fortified by the love of dear friends and family, as well as that of a good man. Though Wilson's down-home prose can sometimes cloy, her debut novel is an affectionate chronicle of one woman's discovery that commitment, support and trust are closer than she thought. (Apr.)