Clay Reynolds
His father (Jessie Wrex)[2] was a railroad man who moved to Quanah from the nearby town of Acme, Texas after returning from World War II.Franklin's Crossing (1993) is in the words of one critic his "big" book (688 pages) and "his most overtly historic novel...a frontier saga set a few years after the Civil War in the so-called Comanche Spring of 1874."[9] In addition to receiving advance praise by Elmer Kelton and Larry McMurtry,[10] the book was described by one critic as a "crass, uneasy mix of women’s romance, men’s action yarn, historical detail, and the deplorable contemporary vogue for sadistic cruelty and horror.”[11] Another novel, the 2003 novel, Ars Poetica: A Postmodern Parable, is considered an academic satire set in contemporary times.[15] The book's introduction (written by Reynolds) states that the stories were revised from their original published forms as the author's sensibilities toward his subjects had evolved over time.Publishers Weekly described the book as "nine winning yarns about smalltown people trapped in mean circumstances ....Reynolds shines penetrating light on small lives.[21] Another review described the book as "funny, raunchy and fascinating as (protagonist) Gil Hooley becomes the reluctant hero of a horse opera powered by odd twists of plot acted out by some even odder characters".[22] One critic, commenting on the less-than-heroic qualities of Hooley the protagonist, remarks that "by introducing heroes as antiheroes, (Reynolds) approaches flawed characters with heart.[23] One critic called it a "subtle performance," saying that "Clay Reynolds is uncannily skilled at rendering vignettes of strangers forced to occupy the same physical space.Although Reynolds has written about the American West and reviewed historical novels, his fiction is set in a variety of time periods: 1870s, 1880s, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s and even a 21st-century urban environment (Vox Populi)."[2] One critic wrote that one distinguishing feature of Reynolds' fiction "is found in the recurrent pattern of tongue-tied and not very bright good old Texas boys courting the mystery of beauty they cannot understand nor resist.