Born amidst tragedy and implacable hatreds, the young Peter McCutcheon is denied his freedom, his birthright, and the fruits of his labors by cruel masters, and by a society and history which denies the truth. The Wages is a monument to individual courage and to the ongoing injustices caused by the suppression of memories and the oppression of people. It is also a powerful document of America's entanglement in slavery and vicious myths of race.

The wages of sin, according to the Bible, is death. Fanny Howe's novel demonstrates that the wages of hate are pain, and a cost not always borne by the perpetrator, or even the current generation.