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.