BOOK REVIEW : Journeys Are Essential--and Involuntary : TRAVELING LADIES <i> by Janice Kulyk Keefer</i> ; William Morrow, $18.95, 272 pages

The protagonists in Janice Kulyk Keefer’s 12 short psychodramas, “Traveling Ladies,” have more in common than gender. One way and another, they’re on involuntary but essential journeys to and from alien places.

None of them is traveling merely for pleasure, adventure or romance, although a few find it in spite of themselves. As Canadians, they tend to be unusually susceptible to new experience, either welcoming the exotic with unqualified enthusiasm or regarding anything foreign with suspicion.

Anna, in the story “Prodigals,” has been rocketing around the world for six years, supporting herself by teaching English to would-be emigrants. So far, she’s made only one firm commitment: to escape her dreary provincial Canadian background. Still, when the telegram telling her of her grandmother’s illness reaches her in Munich, Anna is on the next plane home.

Although she’s too late to see her grandmother alive, dream and memory fuse to create not only a reunion but a valediction. The grandmother “will not come up from the cellar steps but will stand halfway up and halfway down, offering something to Anna, gesturing for her to come closer.

And as Anna approaches, she will see that what her grandmother is holding out to her is a basket of food gathered from her garden; food she has baked or preserved. And everything will be neatly, carefully packed, prepared for traveling.”

In “Accidents,” a young academic family is spending a sabbatical year in France. For the wife, Alison, the change is supposed to be therapeutic; an adventure to make her forget the auto accident that has destroyed her self-assurance.

Although her physical injuries have healed completely and her small daughter emerged unscathed, Alison has become a virtual agoraphobe, confining herself to the small fenced garden of their rented flat. When her child befriends the house cat, Alison finds herself drawn into the life of her ancient landlady, an encounter she had diligently tried to avoid. Unnerving as these meetings are, they provide the essential impetus to her recovery.

“Isola Bella” shows Keefer in a more ironic but equally solemn mood. Three unattached and hopelessly mismatched women have taken a house together in Provence, an impulsive decision made for all the wrong reasons. Collie, who rented the place, is celebrating her divorce and has persuaded two school friends, Nibs and Jetta, to join her.

The tenuous relationship among the three has long since evaporated, creating a permanent state of tension. While Collie writes pulp romances and Jetta paints, Nibs is left to manage the dreary practical details her glamorous friends disdain, but she enjoys every second, for reasons only discovered on the last page.

“The Gardens” is almost merry by contrast to the darker tales. A Canadian couple is unobtrusively honeymooning in a small French inn. The groom is staid and fussy, suffering from headaches and sinusitis; the prim bride has brought a trousseau of “floor-length flannelette nightgowns, perfectly square white underpants innocent of bow or ribbon and brassieres that could have been designed in an armory.” You’d expect this pair to return to Toronto a day or two ahead of schedule, relieved to be back on home ground, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The last four stories in the collection, “The Gray Valise,” “The Dark,” “Going Over the Bars” and “A Really Good Hotel,” deal with the ultimate unwilled journey.

In this bleak company, “The Gray Valise” transcends a gloomy beginning to become one of the most satisfactory of the lot, showing the delightful transformations that take place when the author allows them to happen. A sour, resentful Canadian widow is secretly fulfilling her husband’s last eccentric wish and traveling to an obscure Italian town to scatter his ashes over the hills.

Although her brief adventure never approaches the Roman spring of Mrs. Stone (of Tennessee Williams fame), you sense that the woman who returns to Toronto is subtly but fundamentally different from the rigid, intolerant person who left five days before.

Next: Carolyn See reviews “Treetops: A Family Memoir,” by Susan Cheever (Bantam Books).