When Nona Conklin brings him a painting by the great-grandfather she never knew, gallery owner Timothy Randolph knows he's found the project of a lifetime: curating a spectacular cache of folk art hidden for decades in the mountains of her home.
"God never made a lazier man than Cecil Conklin. Never put a more slothful soul in a fella big enough to wrestle an ox to the ground."
The Conklin Collection is haunted and haunting, powerful in its brutal simplicity. What looks like the work of a fevered imagination begins to appear more and more like the desperate attempts of a man toiling at the edge of his limits to depict what cannot be depicted…
An underlying order as old as the hills, its thousand throats concealed beneath the roots and rocks, between the streams and trees, deep in the besieged mountains of Appalachia.
"My momma said it was their eighteenth summer when Cecil started shooting up like a weed again. That ain't normal."
But the most crucial painting of all is missing. And the only place it could be is the last place that should be searched.
"The rest, I think they always knew deep down Cecil was the one in trouble, that something was after him already. He never should've gone over the mountain."
I'll Bring You the Birds From Out of the Sky is a tale of art and obsession, of a dying heritage and cosmic horror, brought to rustic life with full-color paintings by artist Kim Parkhurst.
