Why We Dared follows an Australian woman into a wartime rescue network in France

Daryl Farry’s new novel Why We Dared centers on Melbourne-born Bernadette Mary O’Shea, who goes to France as a young bookkeeper and becomes involved with a Carmelite abbey sheltering Jewish refugees during the German occupation. The book blends fiction with real wartime history in Lyon and explores how ordinary acts of courage shape survival.

Why it matters: - Why We Dared turns a wartime rescue story into a novel about moral choice, civilian resistance and the hidden labor that helped save lives during the German occupation of France. - The book also connects Australian history to European wartime resistance through a Melbourne-born protagonist.

What happened: - Author Daryl Farry’s novel Why We Dared follows Bernadette Mary O’Shea, an Australian woman born in Melbourne in July 1915. - Bernadette studies bookkeeping and shorthand, takes night classes in French and travels to France as a young woman. - She takes a job with a trading company in Paris and later does part-time bookkeeping for a Carmelite abbey in Lyon. - The abbey is part of a network that shelters Jewish men, women and children during the German occupation.

The details: - Bernadette is the sixth child of Irish Catholic parents. - Her father works on the wharves and is seriously injured in a crane collapse in 1934. - Her journey to France passes through Singapore, Colombo, Alexandria and Cairo before she arrives in Marseille. - In Lyon, the abbey works with a bishop, a local underground group and trusted outsiders to hide refugees. - By the middle of the book, the network has helped more than 300 people. - The story includes forged papers, safe houses, coded messages and night movements through the covered passageways of Lyon. - After the Germans take over the southern zone in November 1942, the danger intensifies. - Bernadette later joins the abbey as a postulant and works with a friend named Miriam to escort people through the streets. - An operation called Silent Dove in August 1944 sends two postulants to guide 15 people across the city under German patrols. - The Mother Superior, Mother John, is arrested, tortured and deported to a camp in Poland. - The later chapters follow Mother John’s recovery. - The novel is fiction set against real history, including the fall of France, the Vichy regime and the Gestapo’s presence in Lyon. - Real figures, including Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie, appear in the book. - The violence is described without graphic detail, but the story still includes torture, concentration camps and deaths in hiding.

Between the lines: - The novel frames resistance as practical work as much as heroic defiance. - Small acts such as keeping accounts, delivering messages and guiding strangers across a bridge carry the moral weight of the story. - The book’s slower, reflective pace suggests Farry is aiming for historical and ethical depth rather than thriller momentum. - The ending conversation between Mother John and Klaus Barbie reinforces the book’s central question about duty, faith and goodness in wartime.

What's next: - The novel is now positioned for readers interested in historical fiction, Australian wartime connections and stories of Christian rescue networks in Nazi-occupied Europe. - Farry’s background in war and emergency work continues to shape his writing, following an earlier nonfiction book about war and his later move into fiction. - Felicity edits his manuscripts, and their son Joshua designs his covers.

The bottom line: - Why We Dared uses one Australian woman’s journey to show how survival in wartime often depended on quiet, risky acts of conscience.