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.
According to a review of the Vigil in the New York Times,[8] "Mr. Reynolds writes no-nonsense prose, and his rendering of the town of Agatite and its inhabitants, while not especially vivid, is efficient.
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.
Author George Garrett, the judge who selected this book as the winner of the 2002 George Garrett Fiction Prize,[12] called it a "masterfully told tale of an aging poet who finally turns his back on the system that he feels failed him ...."[13] One critic described the novel as "darkly comic and compelling ... (which) works as portrait of a poet's pathetic slide into despair.
[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.
"[5] Another critic wrote that Reynolds is "helping to restore western history to where it belongs in the lives of real people who have lived in real places," and his fiction acknowledges that prior depictions of the West have "...perpetuated false attitudes, the excesses of individualism and rationalism against the need for sharing and intuition, the absurdity of misogyny, and the prejudices against Native Americans, African Americans, and Hispanics.