IT was a Hollywood actress who persuaded Ms Tina Sadler to write a book about the most traumatic episode of her whole life and the astonishing way in which she responded to it.

Thirteen years ago the Northallerton teacher had her left forearm torn off in a car crash while on holiday in the Australian outback. She believes to this day that she owes her life to an Aborigine who found her and stemmed the flow of blood with a tourniquet until the flying doctor aircraft landed five hours later.

She once admitted that after the accident she could not travel for more than 30 minutes in a car without reliving the trauma. Yet by some supreme feat of psychological strength she has overcome her secret sub-conscious fear of fast-moving objects, and bridged a yawning divide, by becoming Britain's first one-armed woman pilot.

Exactly three years to the day after the car crash which interrupted her career at the Allertonshire school, Ms Sadler found her self-respect and sense of adventure restored when she flew a light aircraft solo for the first time following an intensive six-week training course in Atlanta, Georgia.

A lot has happened since that landmark day on August 21, 1990, not least a chance meeting in the splendidly wild natural scenery of Utah with one Leslie Parrish Bach.

The name may not be immediately familiar, but as the actress Leslie Parrish she appeared in a number of Hollywood films including the highly rated 1962 political thriller The Manchurian Candidate, with Frank Sinatra, Janet Leigh, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury.

Her surname gained an extra dimension when she married the author Richard Bach, whose story Jonathan Livingston Seagull was turned into a film which is remembered rather less well than the original book.

The meeting between the two women might never have taken place had Ms Sadler not gone to Utah, a place she had never seen, because she had heard about a spa in the canyons there.

Ms Sadler found herself unexpectedly in the company of some high profile Americans, including a television producer and a couple of actresses. She was climbing a canyon one day when Leslie Parrish Bach fell into step beside her and noticed the Yorkshire teacher's newly-acquired pilot wings on a locket around her neck.

A conversation developed and Ms Sadler, now aged 41, says: "She told me that I really needed to get my story written down. She taught me how to use a word processor and she and her husband have been helping me with different drafts.'' She adds: "I learned that Richard Bach had 18 rejection slips for Jonathan Livingston Seagull, but it went on to sell 90m copies and was published in 37 languages.''

As a first time author, Ms Sadler has not experienced such a crushing number of initial failures, nor does she expect to emulate such eventual world-wide success with her own modest effort. She had written her story down, as her Hollywood friend had suggested, but it lay in a cupboard for three years before she had it published locally in limited numbers.

Her chosen title, Accidents Don't Happen, is a significant one reflecting what can best be described as an eerie coincidence. Even while she still had two arms, she was eventually reduced to driving with only one because of a persistent pain in her left wrist.

She explains: "The book is not about me or the accident, more about destiny. Things happen to you in life, they happen for a reason and in retrospect you see that reason for good or bad.

"For some inexplicable reason I lost the use of my left arm three months before I lost it altogether in the car accident. It was X-rayed but they could find nothing wrong with it. They thought it was just strained.''

Ms Sadler, badminton champion at Northallerton grammar school in 1975, led a highly active life before her accident. She enjoyed parachuting and gliding and once said she could not imagine living a life which excluded that small element of risk.

She was attending a training weekend with the British Amputee Sports Association - "in a desperate attempt to find something exciting to do which did not need both arms'' - at Stoke Mandeville hospital when the idea of learning to fly with only one was implanted in her mind by an Olympic badminton coach.

Two years after her accident, she successfully applied for one of only ten of the RAF benevolent fund's international air tattoo flying scholarships for the disabled in memory of Sir Douglas Bader. Her scholarship was sponsored by British Gas. A 2-day interview at Biggin Hill, the former Battle of Britain airfield in Kent, was followed by a week of tense waiting until she learned that she would cross the Atlantic to learn a completely new skill at the controls of a small Piper Cherokee.

At first she experienced a special terror of landings, but conquered her fears through deliberate relaxation and positive thinking. By the end of the course, at the Epps flight school in Atlanta, she had completed 49 hours' flying, five of which were solo, with her cosmetic arm reinforced and physically attached to the controls.

She explains: "It was not so much a physical thing as a mental thing. Whenever I got into a car, let alone a plane, I froze because of the accident.

"But I didn't want my life to be dictated by my disability. I thought that if I could learn to fly a plane it would be a challenge. I wanted to prove to myself that I was as good as, if not better than, before.

"I was petrified when I first went up, but it was a case of having to fight that. Everyone knew I had gone to Atlanta, so I could not come back without my licence. That was the main thing that kept me going.

"I soloed the plane exactly three years after I lost my arm and that was probably the biggest buzz I had ever had in my life.''

Now back at the Allertonshire as a behavioural support teacher, Ms Sadler has kept in touch with Leslie Parrish Bach and her husband, who encouraged her to get so much out of her system.

She says: "You cannot afford negative thoughts if you want to fulfil a dream. Think positively and do it. I also believe that any ordinary person is capable of writing a book.''

l Accidents Don't Happen (Blaisdon Publishing, £10.50) is available from Dressers, Northallerton, Northallerton Bookshop or by e-mail at christinasadler for good or bad.

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