Shawna Richer, The Star

 Justin Bieber’s frenzied fans think the Canadian pop phenomenon’s infective hits, lustrous hair and adoring social media love are a gift from God.

His mother, Pattie Mallette, knows he is, and after reading her first book, Nowhere But Up (on sale now), it’s clear her truth on the sentiment is deeper than that of the everyday parent. Getting pregnant at 17 may have saved her life, in turn giving Mallette a beloved only son and millions of teenage girls a heartthrob.

She was 2 when her father left Pattie, her mother and older brother; she was already suffering sexual abuse at the hands of several acquaintances by the age of 3. It continued for years, while she struggled impossibly to talk to her mother and stepfather, whom she portrays with love but not always flattery.

She drank, smoked pot, shoplifted and vandalized school property with a bad crowd through her teenage years in Stratford, Ont.. She lost her virginity at 15 to date rape, and a failed suicide attempt landed her in a psychiatric ward for 19 days, where she connected with a pastor she still calls her “spiritual dad” and describes an epiphany God was looking out for her.

Mallette’s story is painfully honest in its early years. She is at her darkest when she becomes pregnant, and then, a spiritual awakening.

“When I got pregnant I just went, whoa, now I’m responsible for another life and I really need to get my stuff together,” Mallette, 37, says during an interview to promote the book. “I feel like, with my past, I didn’t deserve to have the most amazing child that I have. But it’s almost in spite of me, with God’s amazing grace and mercy that we are where we are today.”

The book, a brave and moving account, lays bare a past she’s still somewhat uncomfortable with. “It was painful to write, it’s still painful to talk about sometimes,” she says.

“I just remember why I’m doing it. It’s not a celebrity mom tell-all book. It’s a story of my life to hopefully inspire others to get through similar pain.”

Justin has known about his mother’s life before he arrived in it for the past six years.

“I didn’t let him hear my story until he was about 12 years old,” she says. “He heard it for the first time and he had some tears. It opened up the door for some conversation. We’ve talked through the issues, finding child words for the grown-up issues.”

She was about 15 — the same age Justin was when his music career began — when she summoned the courage to challenge her abusers, inspired by a PSA on television. To her shock they walked away, and Mallette recalls it was the first time in her young life she had power.

When she met Jeremy Bieber, a tough, handsome boy, she felt she finally had love. Much of their four-year on-and-off relationship was unhealthy, she writes, and it took years to let him go.

When she became pregnant, many people encouraged her to have an abortion, saying she was in no position to raise a baby. She wasn’t, but never considered it, and when her parents refused to help, she checked into a centre for teenage moms in London run by the Salvation Army.

It became a haven, when even Jeremy walked out on her during a Lamaze class. “It was really a personal choice for me,” says Mallette, who calls herself pro-choice. “I just knew it wasn’t an option for me.”

Her acceptance of Christianity has not been quite as straightforward, but she credits it for much of her healing, and for buoying her while she juggled part-time jobs and school while raising Justin.

“It’s definitely a lifelong process,” she says. “The journey of my faith is not in a neat tidy bow. It’s a little messy, and it’s raw and it’s real, but that was my experience. In sharing my faith I’m not necessarily preaching or telling people how they should do it. I’m just sharing my experience and what got me through.”

She and Jeremy are on good terms now. Mallette doesn’t whitewash their troubled past in the book, but declines to talk about his reaction to it.

Her son, she says with some emotion, is “super proud” of her. He wrote the book’s foreword. “My mom is the strongest woman I’ve ever met,” Justin writes. “It was hard to read about my mom’s pain, but I recognize how important it is for her story to be told.”

Therapy, like her faith, has been a long and ongoing process. She has forgiven, but not confronted her abusers. She has pledged her sexuality to God, and will wait for marriage before sleeping with a man again.

For all the painful anecdotes in Nowhere But Up, it succeeds as a story of well-earned hope. With 1.4 million mostly youthful Twitter followers, Mallette knows she has one of the largest captive teenage audiences of any mom with on the planet.

“Some of Justin’s fans were young, single mothers,” she says. “I hope to change hearts and inspire people to get to a better place in their own life, where healing is concerned. I want them to feel like if I can do it, they can.”